These are—according to Fox Business data—the best and worst educated states in the United States of America, ordered by percentage of residents 25 or older with at least a bachelor's degree in 2011. The table also shows how those states voted. Can you see any pattern?

Perhaps there's no correlation. Perhaps it is just a coincidence.
Attachments:

It looks like education is also related to religious beliefs and the election. It looks like everyone is going to hell except the Confederates.
Attachments:

Unemployment Rates for States
Monthly Rankings
Seasonally Adjusted
Sept. 2012p

Rank State Rate
LOWEST RATE
1 NORTH DAKOTA 3.0 - Romney
2 NEBRASKA 3.9 - Romney
3 SOUTH DAKOTA 4.4 - Romney
4 IOWA 5.2 - Obama
4 OKLAHOMA 5.2 - Romney
6 UTAH 5.4 - Romney
6 VERMONT 5.4 - Obama
6 WYOMING 5.4 - Romney
9 HAWAII 5.7 - Obama
9 NEW HAMPSHIRE 5.7 - Obama

HIGHEST RATE
40 ILLINOIS 8.8 - Obama
41 CONNECTICUT 8.9 - Obama
41 NEW YORK 8.9 - Obama
43 GEORGIA 9.0 - Romney
44 SOUTH CAROLINA 9.1 - Romney
45 MISSISSIPPI 9.2 - Romney
46 MICHIGAN 9.3 - Obama
47 NORTH CAROLINA 9.6 - Romney
48 NEW JERSEY 9.8 - Obama
49 CALIFORNIA 10.2 - Obama
50 RHODE ISLAND 10.5 - Obama
51 NEVADA 11.8 - Obama

There are a lot of well educated fools in some states.

WTF Works-both-ways??? You obviously have no clue on statistical analysis and willing to use any random stat to backup your flawed premise. On your "lowest rate" list, Obama is there 4 times (60% Romney); on your "highest rate" list, Romney is there 4 times (60% Obama)... That's 1-state way from even.

Compare that to the college-list above: 10/10 (100%) for Obama on most educated, 9/10 (90%) Romney for least educated.

There's a BIG difference between 60% and 90-100% on a list that includes 10 items.

Like most Americans OP has no clue what statistics mean or how to interpret them.

The telling statistic would be the education level of the people who actually voted and whom they voted for - not the overall educational make up of the state.

Please before you start calling me names I am a democrat, I voted for Mr. Obabma but as a math teacher it makes me sick how the uneducated don't understand and how the politicians abuse the "truth" revealed by statistics.

I don't think the OP has a good handle on the demographics of the states he or she has listed.

Romney carried:

37.64% of the popular vote in Mass
36.40 in Maryland
46.52% in Colorado
47.83% in Connecticut

So, based on the OP's statistics, we can conclude that only 2% of the people in Massachusetts with a college degree voted for Obama, all of the people with a college education in Maryland voted for Obama, 10% in Colorado, and all of the college educated people in Connecticut voted for Romney.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2012 09:15AM by Yo Daddio.

Sounds to me like the school systems are producing liberals.

Could it be the schools are a propoganda machine?

HOA MGR Wrote:
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> Sounds to me like the school systems are producing
> liberals.
>
> Could it be the schools are a propoganda machine?

Schools are producing people drowning in debt, who vote for Obama hoping that his second term will bring a bail out for them and debt forgiveness.

High Education = High Debt = Vote for Bail Out

HOA MGR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sounds to me like the school systems are producing
> liberals.
>
> Could it be the schools are a propoganda machine?


Then how do you account for the idiots who voted FOR Romney? Were they all home-schooled? (I wouldn't doubt it, but that gets us back to the OP's assertion.)

You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

voterid Wrote:
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> Schools are producing people drowning in debt, who
> vote for Obama hoping that his second term will
> bring a bail out for them and debt forgiveness.
>
> High Education = High Debt = Vote for Bail Out

Think about that statement for a moment. How many BUSINESSES have taken advantage of bankruptcy and other bail out arrangements over the past decade in order to reduce their debt to manageable levels Mr. Trump? Why is it considered a GOOD THING for businesses to be able to shed excess debt, but it is considered a BAD THING for individuals to be able to do the same?

Because if I don't agree that a business deserves a bankruptcy I can stop using that business.

I can't stop paying the taxes that pay bad student loans.

I lost my freedom to choose.

Its un-American.

Bill.N. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> voterid Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Schools are producing people drowning in debt,
> who
> > vote for Obama hoping that his second term will
> > bring a bail out for them and debt forgiveness.
>
> >
> > High Education = High Debt = Vote for Bail Out
>
> Think about that statement for a moment. How many
> BUSINESSES have taken advantage of bankruptcy and
> other bail out arrangements over the past decade
> in order to reduce their debt to manageable levels
> Mr. Trump? Why is it considered a GOOD THING for
> businesses to be able to shed excess debt, but it
> is considered a BAD THING for individuals to be
> able to do the same?

Good question. One of the reasons that education debt is virtually impossible to shed is that an education cannot be taken back from you, unlike a house or a car. No one can come back and foreclose on your Bachelor's degree or Nursing certificate or whatever.

Also, business credit tends to be pretty hard to get, and is secured in most cases by land, buildings, equipment, etc., and in the cases of small businesses, by the personal guarantee of the owners. When a business goes bust, everything that is left is disposed of, and what remains gets distributed to creditors. Can't do that with a person, and you certainly can't do that with someone's education.

HOA MGR-A better analogy would be a 401k. You may get to choose whether to participate and if so which type of investment the funds are put in. However the investment manager gets to decide which specific companies to invest in. If some underperform or even go bust, then you pay for it.

Voterid-The problem with your argument is that it describes bankruptcy in theory. Having had customers go bankrupt on me over the years I can tell you that the practice of bankruptcy is often far different than the theory. Quite often the greatest "asset" that a business has is the connections and know how of the business owner. If the business goes bust, those connections and know how are not taken away from the owner any more than degrees are taken away from students. As a result the owner is free to take those connections and know how and start up a new business, or go to work for someone else.

Bill.N. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Voterid-The problem with your argument is that it
> describes bankruptcy in theory. Having had
> customers go bankrupt on me over the years I can
> tell you that the practice of bankruptcy is often
> far different than the theory. Quite often the
> greatest "asset" that a business has is the
> connections and know how of the business owner.
> If the business goes bust, those connections and
> know how are not taken away from the owner any
> more than degrees are taken away from students.
> As a result the owner is free to take those
> connections and know how and start up a new
> business, or go to work for someone else.

You are describing a small business, and I agree - small businesses a lot of times aren't much more than a job for the owner and few other people. Once you get to something larger that actually has substantial assets, you get more hope for recovery for creditors.

What needs to happen, IMHO, is that just like banks with mortgages now, schools need to retain the student loans they make in some way so that they are not just getting the tuition payment and the re-payment risk is socialized via Federal loans. If you did this, though, just like with mortgages, you would suddenly see a whole lot less student loans made. Many universities have massive endowments which they could invest in their own product by making and holding student loans to their own graduates. Go to a system like that, and we won't have any more Art History majors graduating with 100K in debt.

From what I've seen the difference between theory and practice differs even more in large bankruptcies than small. In part that is probably because "bankruptcy planning" is part of the package at that level.

Regardless.

I agree that the system needs to be changed for future students, but we need to be looking at doing something for past students as well. Perhaps an issue for another thread. However let's not be too hard on those Art History majors. There are plenty of marketing and finance students with similar debt levels, not to mention unemployed law and grad psych majors with twice that level of debt.

voterid Wrote:

>
> What needs to happen, IMHO, is that just like
> banks with mortgages now, schools need to retain
> the student loans they make in some way so that
> they are not just getting the tuition payment and
> the re-payment risk is socialized via Federal
> loans. If you did this, though, just like with
> mortgages, you would suddenly see a whole lot less
> student loans made. Many universities have
> massive endowments which they could invest in
> their own product by making and holding student
> loans to their own graduates. Go to a system like
> that, and we won't have any more Art History
> majors graduating with 100K in debt.

An interesting idea, but unworkable. Schools are in the business of education, not debt collection. Foist this responsibility off on them and they'll have to duplicate costs and infrastructure, adding to their own overhead with no benefit to students. Endowments are nearly always encumbered. Even the most generous contributors want something in return: a certain type of scholarship, a specific kind of research institute, a building that must be maintained, and the like. Proceeds from the invested endowment is supposed to pay for that.

What you really seem to be suggesting is that by managing student loans, a school could steer students into a "lucrative" field, and keep them from graduating with massive debt and a "suitable for framing" degree. Putting aside the obvious Orwellian implications of this, it just wouldn't be that easy to do. Too much guessing is still involved. Someone with a Liberal Arts degree could do extremely well -- George Lucas has a BA in Fine Arts, and about $4 billion dollars.

According to a recent article in my IEEE Journal, the hot engineering fields at this moment are environmental, biomedical, industrial, and civil. But the daughter of a friend graduated from a good engineering school (fight song "I'm a ramblin' wreck from...") with a 3.5 GPA in Civil at the beginning of the last construction downturn and waited tables for nearly two years before landing an engineering job.

True there are general trends, the sciences and engineering are overall safer bets for well paid and immediate employment, but the BA is also much more flexible than the BS. Add to that the huge cost difference between a STEM program and Philosophy -- to teach Philosophy the school needs to furnish a room with light, hvac, chairs, maybe a white board; as opposed to Electrical Engineering which needs all that AND a $5 million dollar lab -- and cash strapped school may find it's a lot more advantageous to crank out English majors then Engineering majors.

TheProfessor Wrote:
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> ...(fight song "I'm a ramblin' wreck from...")...

First hit, Google search: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramblin%27_Wreck_from_Georgia_Tech

Are the progeny of former cannibals among the educated? Perhaps slack taken up by
those Spanish-speakers mostly noted for fucking their sisters?

Looks like the most educated are mostly yankees which makes them educated idiots.

Stoney Wrote:
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> Looks like the most educated are mostly yankees
> which makes them educated idiots.


Educated idiots who carry the economy of this country. Without The mid atlantic and Northeast this country would be about as relevant as Argentina moron

I love how people who think they are south think that their state helps our country. If we didnt have the south our country would be a lot more fiscally solvent and powerful you numbnuts