The uncomfortable reality of human intelligence

Intelligence tests were developed for the Army in World War I. The army had a problem: how to filter out those potential recruits who simply weren’t smart enough to do any useful job in the army, and how to do it before the army had wasted valuable time and money trying (unsuccessfully) to train them. In the intervening years considerable work has been done to improve and tune these tests. Of course they are only a rough measure of intelligence, since human intelligence is expressed in many subtle and individual ways, not all of which are captured by the tests. Nevertheless, as a gross measure of intelligence the tests are pretty good despite what some critics argue.

Now intelligence is “normally distributed” in the population. That means, measured over large groups of people, it tends to be distributed in a Gaussian or “bell shaped” curve, just like some other attributes, like height or weight.  Most people are clustered around the middle, with a diminishing proportion in the tails, either much less or much more intelligent.  

  

Intelligence tests are standardized so that the mean score (the middle) is 100. There is a measure (I won’t define it. You can look it up in Wikipedia if you want the details) called the “standard deviation” which divides the normal distribution, and intelligence tests are standardized to have a standard deviation of 15. Each colored bar above is 1 standard deviation.

The diagram shows what proportion of the population falls into each area. For example, 34% of people will have an IQ between 100 and 115, and 68% will have an IQ that falls somewhere between 85 and 115.  Similarly, only 2% of the population will be in the 130-145 range (the gifted range) , and only 0.1% above 145 (the genius range).

Now in World War I the American army found that potential recruits more than one standard deviation below the mean (IQ of 84 or less) simply were not useful in the army, and so were not accepted for service. These days the armed forces use the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) for the same purpose.

In general it takes an IQ of about 115 or above to successfully do demanding undergraduate level college work (not counting the dumbed-down courses some colleges have created for their more intellectually-challenged athletes). But no doubt a few people with lower IQs who are hard workers and persistent also make it – persistence and hard work is a great equalizer. A postgraduate degree in science or math may well take more than that.

Now when Bernie Sanders proposes “college for all” this is the reality his proposal faces – less than 20% the population has the intellectual capacity to do demanding college level academic work, and some of those probably aren't interested or temperamentally suited to academic work. We ought to have, as many European countries do, an alternate apprentice or trade school route, equally valued in society, for the other 80+ % of the population, many of whom would be excellent, and could earn a good living, at many non-academic trades. Unfortunately we have developed a snobbishness among our elite (including the media) which only values a college education.  Note that currently about 30% of Americans have at least a 4-year college degree, but then colleges have added a lot of less academically demanding courses, as well (under pressure from college administrators) as skewing grading standards to produce more graduations so that the college ranks higher.

Similarly, when one looks at some of the absurd things people will believe, especially from their politicians, keep in mind the curve above. Half the population, including roughly half the vote-eligible population, falls below the mean IQ of 100.

Now this is a touchy subject, probably politically incorrect in some liberal circles, but it is reality nonetheless, and it is a reality we badly need to come to terms with. In an increasingly technological world, where an increasing proportion of jobs require more than average intelligence, what is to become of the massive proportion of the population that cannot cope?  Once upon a time a less intelligent person could still get a job as, say, a ditch digger.  Have you seen ditches being dug today? The “ditch digger” will be a highly skilled machine operator sitting on top of a quarter-million dollar machine. Even the intellectually unchallenging (but not necessarily easy) assembly line jobs are now largely done by robots.

It’s clear we as a society need to do at least two things: (1) stop assuming that only college graduates are worth hiring, and (2) think hard about how the less intellectually endowed among us can find valued work that pays a living wage in an increasingly technological world.

Recommended: Unmasking the College-Admissions Fraud

Along the same lines as the previous post, I recommend the article today Unmasking the College-Admissions Fraud. It makes the point that there is a lot more wrong with the system that just this recent cheating scandal.

The emperor’s new clothes

In the current American anti-elitist and anti-intellectual political atmosphere, the ongoing college admissions cheating scandal makes great press, with wonderful villains. But in truth, there is nothing here that we all didn’t already know about the inequality and failings of the American higher education system.

We already knew that Ivy League colleges were big corporations that worried far more about building huge (tax free) endowments and lucrative salaries and posh offices for the administrators (more deans than professors in some cases) than about educating the students, despite their expensive marketing propaganda.

We already knew that donating a building or endowing a chair, or knowing a trustee or looking rich enough that one might be persuaded to make a donation, was a reliable way of getting a child into the college.  

We already knew that most college undergraduate education (and a good bit of postgraduate education) doesn’t prepare students for the world of work. Indeed, the so-called “distribution requirements” that for example required a math major to take English literature or foreign languages, supposedly to “broaden” their education, were really in place to ensure that the less popular English departments or foreign language departments got enough students to survive.

We already knew that SAT and ACT coaching schools existed to help the well-off do better on their admission tests (though few know that research shows that just taking the test several times is about as effective as an expensive coaching school).

We already knew that Ivy League students tend to do better on average than students from other schools, simply because they usually come from wealthier families who could afford better private k-12 education (not to mention better health care and nutrition) before college, and whose connections get them better jobs after graduation. On top of that, these schools have enough applicants that they can pick from among just the top 1% or less.  In fact there is little or no evidence that Ivy League school actually provide a better education than many state universities.

We already knew that the real point of going to an Ivy League school for many students, and for many parents, is simply to be able to say one went to that school – to get the “branding” of an Ivy League education.

Of course if one wants to work in one of the fields controlled by “old boys networks”, like high powered Manhattan legal firms, then attending the “right schools” matters, because one meets “the right people”. It than case the old saying fits: “ It’s not what you know but who you know that matters.”

So titillating as this story is, it doesn’t really tell us anything new about how the rich work the system to their advantage. Money always talks!