This map is from another of my favorite blogs The Map Room. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this chart silently goes along way towards explaining the political and economic divide in this country.
My suspicion is that most of the tiny cluster of blues scattered westward from the Appalachians are college towns.
Toad
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22 comments:
You'd be right. And I can easily spot my county in a sea of red.
I'm guessing the dark blue square in NE Texas must be Austin.
It is odd, by the way, how, ever since the 2000 election, the colors red and blue have come to be permanently associated not only with specific political parties (news organizations used to alternate) but also with entire constellations of values and characteristics. Inadvertent, or deliberate?
Duh, not Austin, of course. Dallas. :/
Mmmm... FL has very little blue if any at all - lots of white - explains a lot.
I'm still stuck on 27% - had no idea it was that low.
And yet sometimes that degree means little in today's job market.
Groan: the mapmaker itself couldn't spell the words in the title correctly. [The accepted rationale for misspelling nowadays is "Well, you knew what I MEANT, didn't you?"]
Thanks for including the link, that's where it was stated that these figures are coming from the number of BA degrees, so there's no record of the number of BS degrees on the map. Wonder why. Is there a bias toward Arts over Sciences?
I feel there's HUGE hope in the growth of our community colleges, not everyone has the luxury of being sent to college compliments of their parents. This is why I respect and support Dr. Jill Biden's work in turning the nation's attention to the riches available in these marvelous local institutions where one may work to accumulate credit hours toward a degree over time as employment and family responsibilities permit.
I'm with James. Shocked that it was 27% in 09' but those like one of my college grads can't get a job above $14./hr. My youngest makes $11./hr. working at her college cafeteria. I just wish that the coveted degree that will take a small lifetime to payback would mean a bigger reward in the end. I tried to tell him to be an Engineer..lol.
Such a fascinating post Toad!
I bring down the percentage in my local. :(
Perhaps the good news is here:
http://www.dailyyonder.com/ba-divide/2010/10/17/2995
My son says, "Mom, don't you wonder why all the people in universities vote the way they do? Don't you think it's meaningful that smart people mostly go this way?
:)
Staircase: intuitively Dallas doesn't feel right. My unfounded guess is that it is Denton, another college town, U of North Texas.
DT: Mrs. T's best buddy hires Psych MA's for a living. Average pay is around $9/hr. Gotta pick yoiur major well, or love your work
My dearest LPC, not to be rude, but educated does not always equate to smart. (Case in point, all those who trusted Bernie Madoff)
As someone who has a foot in both "camps", and can see both sides weaknesses and strenghts- the biggest downfall is when each side begins to view America as "us vs them" versus simply "all of us."
I live in what looks like a deep blue splotch - Montgomery County, Maryland. MoCo as I have heard it called isn't exactly heaven on earth. The density of those who attended college doesn't equate to much more than being able to easily buy a copy of The Financial Times.
Best regards,
JRC
I asked Professor Roberto Gallardo, the author of the map and he told me BA indicates all Bachelor degrees, not just Arts.
Many thanks to him for clarifying.
Yep.. Right there in southeastern Michigan. Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan.
Amen to James. My fiance and I (3.5 degrees between the two of us) were recently arguing over the idea that college degrees would "go out of style" over the next few years, as children (and' parents) analyze the return on the investment of time and money. I argued that the idea was ridiculous; he pointed out that I was wearing boat shoes sans socks in the Santa Fe snow, and that maybe my East Coast ideas about what is "ridiculous" and what is "simply the way things are done" are a little out of touch with the rest of the country.
Thank you, Mr. Toad, for going to such lengths to clarify Prof. Gallardo's intent, you've been most helpful in rounding out the argument. Very chewy stuff, this whole business of measuring the reward of education in financial terms. Never saw it that way as I was working to accrue credit hours on my way to a late-in-life BFA, not for financial gain but for personal artistic breadth & academic foundations in my field. Such personal stories as mine [and others who've commented ahead of me] don't come to light when a broad brush is used to malign "education."
Austin is in the middle of the state and is light blue. Dallas, maybe Denton, is dark blue. Lots of great colleges in the Dallas area, TCU, SMU, Baylor college of Medicine...209 credit hours, no degree. Writer, business owner, sales rep, pro polo player, rancher, poet,interior designer, lover of life...is a degree really necessary? Education is invaluable.
We live in a red county, and everyone in our family has at least a bachelor's degree. However, the next generation ( my children) maybe be different. Unless one is entering a medical or teaching field, I'm not sure it's worth going into debt for, as it might have once been. I vote for entrepreneurship.
In Colorado, the blue area to the west of Denver is the Vail Valley. The Southwest corner almost is Durango, which is a really neat town, home of one or two colleges. The blue area touching Utah is not known to me. There are a lot of archeological digs there, but hardly any people. The North Central blue part of Colorado touching Wyoming and Cheyenne is Fort Collins, home of Colorado State. The northwest corner of Wyoming is Jackson Hole and Yellowstone Park. This whole map is really disappointing. It is not that hard to go to a state school. Many people graduate all the time and spend a lot of their time drunk or hungover.
Love it, mainly because there's so much blue in Colorado!
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