Roll Right

We should really talk about some issues in the sociology section. This is interesting.

Here's some evidence against ongoing gender discrimination out of a very good book called the Meritocracy Myth. You'll see that seadub is right, its 79 cents on the dollar. I was mistaken about the numbers being just about equal. But this isn't due to ridiculous discrimination practices, as Jacib pointed out. And the closing wage gap is actually due to the falling wages of men. And no, its not getting worse. In fact its getting better. "In 2007, the median earnings for full-time, year around female workers was 79 percent of the median hourly wage of male counterparts, whereas in 1970 it was only 60 percent (US Bureau of the Census 2007). However, the rate at which the male-female wage gap has declined has slowed in recent decades, perhaps indicating that the most blatant forms of wage discrimination have largely been eliminated, but remaining subtler forms may be more difficult to overcome. In addition, much of the recent wage-gap reduction is due to the falling wages of men rather than the increasing wages of women. Also, the gains relative to male incomes have been experienced mostly by upper class women, whereas incomes for lower-class woman have remained stagnant. (Massey 2007, 240; Mishel, Bernstein, and Allegretto 2007, 163)." This has to do with the male domination in upper level management and CEO/partner positions. This is where things get really interesting. Male partners in firms are unlikely to take female lawyers under their wing, as they don't want to risk their reputations by allegations of sexual harassment or sexual misconduct. They don't want to start rumors around the office, basically. Also there is a king shit affect that Ellis Cose identified, highly successful women who have convinced themselves they got as far as the did alone, and are unwilling to support other women in lower level positions because of it. Frankly the pay gap we see right now is largely due to two factors, 1)birth (as you mentioned), 2) Old men holding on to their positions of power and high pay. When they die, the next in line for many high powered white collar jobs are women. heres some numbers here: "By 2005, women earned 58 percent of all bachelors degrees, 60 percent of all master's degrees, and 49 percent of all doctoral degrees (National Center for Education Statistics 2007a). Women have also achieved parity or near parity in professional degrees in law (48 percent), and podiatry (45 percent), and they have far exceeded men in earning degrees in optometry (59 percent), pharmacy (67 percent) and veterinary medicine (77 percent)...Likewise, women are rapidly closing the gaps in degrees in the male-dominated field of engineering..." So this all really makes sense. Consider the time line..the increase in wages since the 1960's is due to a flood of women into high paying technical/professional positions. The number of women gaining higher degrees will create a huge influx of females in hiring processes to replace old men who pass their jobs off after retirement/death. The fall in pay for men is likely due to their minority status in the education field. The wage gap is probably closing also because the men who are dominating the labor market in high paying positions are slowly dying off, hence the drop in wages as well.

Actually, if you look at the numbers, women aren't paid significantly less for the same work. The numbers are about equal now. A lot of people might get mad at me for saying it, but believe me...I didn't believe it at first either. This thread really needs to go away.

I only took a few anthro classes, but I loved them. But no, my degree is in sociology concentrating on crime, law, and deviance.

No, I wouldn't suggest that. But then you're assuming that liberalism smiles upon free sex and frat parties. I don't think we can make a distinction there. Liberalism isn't the free love counter culture that existed in the 60's. Nor is conservatism the ideology of morality. I definately agree that liberalism isn't the main source of brainiacs. That's obviously not true. As I said before, I know plenty of conservative and liberal professors alike. I was merely suggesting that it would be interesting to see if there was a significant level of political switching to the left during a college education. The study that was posted originally was a time-series design using the General Social Survey, so there isn't much control over causality there. A panel study would be really cool!

The only people Ive found to be stupid are the ones who discount Marxism, yet they cant explain it to me. They just tell me the USSR never worked. Boy, that sure was Marxism . I just smile and shake my head. And you cant generalize loose sex to college campuses. And bereft of consequences? Come on now. This isnt one of these "just wait till you get to the real world!" arguments??? And youve basically just suggested that liberals are the product of a world without consequences and are loose with their sexual attitudes and probably drink in excess. Is this Rush Limbaugh in disguise?!!

No, I don't recall it too often. Well, lol...one professor constantly used Obama as an example of charismatic authority during discussions of Weberian ideal types of authority...but it was relevant. He talked him up a whole lot though. So I'm sure some people didn't like it, especially conservatives. People are extremely sensitive to this stuff. A conservative friend of mine complained about being assigned an article from the Huffington Post, cause it was a liberal news source .

LOL @ seadub. I can't tell if you're for real half the time. You'll be fine. Plenty of chance to get in.

Im working on a thesis that examines religiosity and ses. I dont want to go into too much detail here, as Id like to publish it. But Im mainly interested in how religion is affected by material conditions. Also, I do a bit on identity formation and lived experiences, especially when dealing with transcendental experiences.

Yeah...off topic, and I contributed to it as well. While the ideas presented here are pragmatic to the max, of course we cant toss them out. And we havent, as they lit off quite a debate. Honestly, the GRE is losing its grip among graduate schools...and for good reason. While its still used as a benchmark for the typical grad student profile, I think adcomms are looking past it and reviewing each app fully. Im pretty passionate about education and the problems of standardized tests. There are a lot of issues individuals seem to ignore issues that start early in the education process. Things like tracking, which throws students of low SES into basic courses, while filtering advantaged students into higher ed courses...and most of that is correlated with social and cultural capital. This starts in elementary school, and certainly has an effect on the quality of education one recieves. Even if youre person X...you better not grow up socioeconomically disadvantaged. So there are a lot of factors that play into the GRE or any other standard test, obviously. In any case, yeah, the test is still used. Dont stop complaining about it. Theres my soap box about the GRE. I dont even think it was warranted here after reflecting on previous posts. In terms of GPA, well yeah...people make mistakes at the age of 18 and 19..and at the age of 40...and 90.. So you didnt get a super high GPA, dont beat yourself up over it. Like I said earlier, go for the psych avenue. Liberal arts tend to be more forgiving when considering test scores or GPA scores. I tend to think this is because its not profit driven. I dont think seadub is a jackass. Lets keep the personal attacks out. If we want to have a strong discussion on the validity of the test we can do so with mutual respect. Again, I apologize about the comment I made earlier.

I agree, it really couldnt account for everything. But I feel like it may have more significance than other social attributes. I dont want to seem like a purist though, causality is never completely controlled for in any scientific study. Im just really curious about political switching, whether the academy has a significant affect on converting to leftist or right wing politics. Anyone looking for a thesis idea? LOL, there you go!

Very true, Im not in the humanities, but in terms of sociology there is usually a full funding guarantee for up to 5 years. The only requirement for funding is acceptance. Duke and UNC have such policies. So funding can depend on admittance, or it can depend on GPA or GRE scores. The program Im in hands out funding based on such scores, however 2nd year funding is based on merit observed during the first year. So even if your program gives out funding based on incoming GRE or GPA numbers, I think you can secure funding in the second semester or second year at the latest if you put a lot of work into it.

Most definitely, kick it off and I'll post.

Colorless, you read my mind. No one should be in anything for the money..but of course thats my opinion. Work for works sake! Love your job, and be happy with the compensation as well. We need to get away from this idea of materialism, especially when considering education. I'll apologize about my previous post, it was immature. While I don't think it was unwarranted, it's unlike me to make snide comments. As for my cohort, they're all good people. We work side by side and evaluate each others research. Very collaborative atmosphere. So..no, no pretentious individuals. I'm blessed. Frankly, if you want to do something truly great, something you hold to be important, don't let material conditions hold you down. I'm in sociology, I'm 50,000 in debt. The 'realistic' thing to do would be working a job to pay off my 20,000 from undergrad, as sociology professorial positions pay diddly. Yeah it'll take a long time to pay off my loans. Realistically, I'd be unhappy working a job with a bachelors of sociology. Do what you think will yield the most happiness. What do you have to lose? You're not taking your money with you when you die. A Professor and mentor of mine once told me "When you want to achieve greatness and do something truly good, you'll be surprised at the amount of people who want to stop you from accomplishing that." Get into psych, a masters program. Prove through hard work and a kick ass thesis that you're PhD quality, if you want to do a PhD. Med school and Neuro tend to be driven by grades and tests in the app. process.

I'd be worried about the kind of student applying to grad school who looks down their nose at anyone with a lower GRE/GPA. Probably the kind of student I wouldn't want in my cohort. Just saying.

"Thorndike and Hagen (1959), for instance, obtained 12,000 correlations between aptitude test scores and various measures of later occupational success on over 10,000 respondents and concluded that the number of significant correlations did not exceed what would be expected by chance. In other words, the tests were invalid... Holland and Richards (1965) and Elton and Shevel (1969) have shown that no consistent relationships exist between scholastic aptitude test scores in college students and their actual accomplishments in social leadership, the arts, science, music, writing, and speech and drama." -David McClelland, "Testing for Competence rather than Intelligence", appearing in The IQ Controversy, edited by Block and Dworken (Pantheon Books, 1976), page 49. "Clark and Centra studied two samples of doctoral recipients… The resulting sample consisted of 239 chemists, 142 historians, and 221 psychologists, all of whom had at least one GRE score. In chemistry, the correlation of number of articles and book chapters with GRE-verbal was -.02; with GRE-quantitative it was -.01; and with GRE-advanced it was .15… For all historians, these correlations were -.24, -.14, and .00. For all psychologists, the correlations were -.05, -.02, and .02. Clark and Centra also examined the distribution of number of publications by GRE scores. The distributions were essentially flat, with no particular trend. In fact, the largest number of publications was reported by the lowest scoring groups in all three fields(emphasis added)." - Leonard L. Baird, "Do Grades and Tests Predict Adult Accomplishment?" Research in Higher Education 23, no. 1, 1985, page 25. Theres some evidence to the contrary.

Well, I'm actually in a graduate masters program right now, with a 4.0 and a completely quantitative thesis. I did very poorly on the GRE, yet I'm top of my class. I'd be curious to see a study that proved a correlation between GRE success and graduate school success. And I did take the time to study. I studied for an entire semester. I think it's refreshing that a lot of programs are informally waiving the GRE requirement as well. It's kind of an outdated, fossil of a test. I'm not sure why it's still required, as its technologically behind the times, and barely conforms to a high school curriculum. The math may be high school textbook, but the english section surely isn't. The changes I've seen for the future test are refreshing at least.

I'm just not sold on the type casting idea. The survey data is indisputable, the GSS is the best representative sample of the American pop. But I think there may be a better theoretical explanation. Education itself has a way of liberalising individuals. I think the causality might be opposite, maybe higher educations lead to liberal attitudes. You can't tell from the survey, cause the GSS doesn't use panel data. I bet the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (might have then name wrong in sequence...) would yeild interesting results. Tracking political identity over time to see if there was political identity shifting during the education process. Interesting study that would be!

I think we ought to look beyond our individual experiences when trying to get at a conclusion here. I mean, thats how typecasting and stereotypes come about...relying on individual subjective exepriences, then using those experiences to generalize to the greater world.

While Im a leftist, profs dont exactly fit to that stereotype. I think it depends more on your field of study. I know a lot of conservative sociologists. I also know a lot of liberal sociologists. You cant type cast. Are liberals more likely to go to the academy? Perhaps....but then again...we have to consider socioeconomic status as well. Who can afford college in higher percentages? Libs or conservatives? And is there even any relationship? Also, consider the generation most professors grew up in...the 60s. Many of these individuals will be liberal because of that. Counter-culture! Probably more historical causality than some elective affinity. Look at the snap shot of professors and political identity in 20 years. Youll probably see a different demographic.

Naw english won't care.

I'm focusing on stratification as well, which is a big component to my thesis. Other subfields are identity formation and sociology of violence and terrorism. Soc of religion is actually about to blow up. There's a large phenomenology movement wanting to give credence to the transcendental experience. It's pretty interesting. This is going on in a lot of sciences...physics most notably.

Well I'm applying next year. I'm designing a thesis that studies religiosity, and I'm applying to all the big schools in the south that study religion in a sociological perspective. Basically, I'm doing everything I can to make myself marketable...presenting at conferences, emailing professors at prospective schools, looking into the research of those professors...including it in my thesis, trying to work on publishable pieces with my own professors. These are all things I see as speaking louder than GRE scores.

Man I don't know. Sociology is my life. I want nothing else but to get a PhD. It's just what I've decided is my path in life. I guess, if it really is what I'm supposed to do, I won't let a test get in my way. So I'm working in a masters, preparing myself for whats next. If I can show PhD programs the love and passion I have for the discipline, I don't see how they could turn me away...but then again...who knows? Stupid test.

1050 or something... I can't remember, nor do I want to! The test infuriates me. How does it relate to sociology?! I work social stats just fine, I comprehend the readings very well...If a test that measures very little ability is going to keep me out of my chosen profession...well that's just an injustice. I've taken it twice. Both times corresponded with some pretty crappy events in my life. Three times on the test smacks of desperation. I don't want to take it again.