Monday, August 2, 2010
Education Education Indicator
Posted by Mary Cashiola on Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 12:12 PM
A friend of mine recently sent me a link to the Brookings Institute's interactive "State of Metropolitan America Indicator Map," which shows educational attainment, race, age, and immigration status, among other things, across the country.
"The State of Metropolitan America is a signature effort of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program that portrays the demographic and social trends shaping the nation’s essential economic and societal units — its large metropolitan areas — and discusses what they imply for public policies to secure prosperity for these places and their populations."
In terms of high school attainment, Memphis is ranked 60th, with 81.5 percent of the population having graduating high school.
- High school attainment nationwide
Memphis is ranked 70th (of 95 cities) in the percent of the population with bachelor's degrees and 67th in graduate degrees. Those percentages are 23 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively.
Little Rock, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga all rated higher than Memphis in each of those categories.
In related news, Leadership Memphis plans to kick off its 100 Things in 100 Days project next week. As part of the group's larger college attainment initiative, Leadership Memphis is asking individuals to develop a list of 100 ideas that can be done within 100 days to increase the number of college graduates.
“While this short 100-day time frame poses a fun and interesting challenge for the community, this initiative is not to be taken lightly,” says David Williams, president and CEO of Leadership Memphis. “More college graduates will increase the attractiveness of our workforce for employers resulting in more jobs, serve as an antidote for poverty and improve the overall quality of life in the metro area.”
- Bachelor's degree attainment
For data junkies out there, you can use the maps to drill down into certain subsects of the data, capturing educational attainment by race, for instance, or breaking data down by city, suburbs, or state.
[Thanks, PD!]
Comments (9)
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"....says David Williams, president and CEO of Leadership Memphis. “More college graduates will increase the attractiveness of our workforce for employers resulting in more jobs, serve as an antidote for poverty and improve the overall quality of life in the metro area.”
Ok, David. Once we have all these new college graduates, where will they go to work? The Fed-X hub can only hire so many..at $10 per hour. Once again, our supposed leaders have NO CLUE about today's job market. 100 Things in 100 days. What a crock of marketing crap! No, I'm not down on Memphis. We need NEW ideas and we need to think "out of the box." I give you the solution...free of charge.
Let's test those recent high school grads who plan to stay in Memphis, for vocational aptitude. Encourage them to postpone college. (Everyone goes...few graduate) Let's show Joe 18 year-old that he can make $45,000 in the next 12 months...by learning a marketable skill! Let's train these guys to be skilled craftsmen. Heating and air guys always do well. We could use many more about now! Plumbers do well. Electricians are always in demand...etc. For those who are not inclined for trade professions...encourage them to join the military. Get our young people off the street, and into job training programs.
Once these young people become proficient in their trade, they can return to the classroom and learn the mechanics of starting a business. Now look what we've done. We have developed new leaders for tomorrow. We have broadened our tax base by encouraging new business. Along the way, these newly qualified craftsman may wish to purchase a home, a new car, etc. They may wish to hire additional people to help them in their growing business. Wow. What a NOVEL idea! It used to be called the free enterprise system. You know. That thing we no longer teach in high school, cause it's evil capitalism!
Or.... we can pull together more grants funded by the taxpayers. We can provide little Johnnie a scholarship to community college. Two years from now, little Johnny will still be wondering where to start in the job market. He will probably have some student loan debt. He will be two years older. Little 20 year-old Johnnie can, once again, apply for the same job at the Fed-X hub, for $10/hr. It will be part time. It will have limited benefits and he will now have a car note and insurance. Johnnie, if he is a hard worker, may work a 2nd job at Mapco, for minimum wage. Where did his education fail him?
The people at "Leadership Memphis" will make their subsidized 6 figure incomes coming up with "impressive" ideas such as 100 Things in 100 Days." Little Johnnie, now a man, deserves better than a sham, feel good, idea that produces NOTHING! As Susan Powdert once said..."STOP THE INSANITY!"
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So I was reading an article about Richard Florida recently. In it, it acknowledges that there a two ways to raise educational attainment, the slow and fast way. Slow-send your people to school, build sports stadiums to steal other city's 24 to 34 yr/olds, etc. Takes forever & may not work since everybody is doing the same thing. Or, fast way, we can export our poor and uneducated to other prosperous cities. There by giving them economic opportunity and raising our own educational attainment. Of course Florida didn't come up with this himself. He stole the idea from radical marxist geographer and thinker, David Harvey. That would be because Florida is a charlatan.
Good luck exporting our poor and uneducated. They're staying right here; the ones we're exporting are our middle/upper class and educated. I would love to see the proposed mechanics of exporting the poor and uneducated.....
zebra: is that you, Tommy V, showing your kinder, gentler side? If not, you share some of his fingerprints.
I find myself, strangely, agreeing with much (though not all--particularly not your rightie ideology) of your post, especially your dissing of LM, which is, at bottom, an exercise in window dressing and tokenism and, for the most part, and in spite of its lofty goals, little more than a clique for hot-shot business networking.
Here's a test for you: without Googling them, what do "fence posts" and a "turkey" mean (and no, I don't mean down on the farm); what key (and tempo) are "Lady of Spain" played in, and what is kapusta?
I am originally from Knoxville. The reason why they have attained that level of achievement is because of Y-12 and K-25 in Oak Ridge. You have a lot of intact families with a mother and father. You have an expectation that education is the only way for you to succeed. When I can, I'll be happy to move back. I think the reason why Memphis is stuck is due to a lack of dicipline and a willingness to change. The crime rate is high, and the youth think violence and apathy are the only way. I am tired of trying and am ready to go elsewhere.
IN other words, the federal government created a nexus of government investment and hired a bunch of PhD's to work there. Voila. Instant high educational achievement.
Zebra, It sounds so good only he way Memphis has done it, those high school grads who didn't hit college have criminal records and can not own a business. Sorry, thanks for playing.
I would not at all be surprised to find out that there are more people from Memphis with graduate degrees in Atlanta than here.
While I will be the first to agree that all students are not meant for college, we must encourage the ones who are. A large percentage of Memphians suffer from multi-generational poverty; due to this, many children consider functional illiteracy to be the norm. By presenting these children with other options, we have the chance to begin to break this cycle. The rest of the world has raised the bar on what is considered minimal education; the state of Tennessee is just beginning to do so by making our standards more difficult. I know Memphians have a hard time being proud of change being implemented, but we are currently at the cutting edge of educational reform. The best educators from around the world are excited about what is going on in our city. We can no longer place the blame on the parents (even though they are often a major part of the problem) because you cannot force someone to be involved in things they don't understand; instead, we must take a collective stand to promote the best interests of our youth.
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