Education in the desert, part four

And I might as well get on with part five as well, so look for it soon.

I need to tread lightly here, not because I'm concerned with offending anyone's sensibilities, but because I would strongly prefer not to be hauled out into the desert in the middle of the night and beaten to a pulp with a camel prod.

The thing is this: I really have serious doubts as to whether this nation will ever be able to stand on its own without the help of skilled workers from that terrible, corrupt, demon-ridden place called (gasp!) THE WEST. Here's why:

I've just heard about the academic results from, oh, let's just call it a past semester at some educational institution here in the UAE. And they're bad. I mean really bad. These numbers make my 3.2 GPA from a tier one university (ok, it was back when substance use was probably encouraged by the provost) look like a pretty satisfactory criterion for the Fields Medal. I can't give you the actual numbers, but I can give you a hint: 2.0 is to the right of the mean.

That's pretty bad in itself, but what's worse is the fact that the results differ dramatically when we compare demographic groups. What, you ask, do I mean by that?

I'll illustrate with an example:

Suppose we took a group of, oh, I don't know, cars, and divided it into two subgroups. One of those groups is, let's say, the set of all Maseratis, and the other is the set of non-Maseratis. Now we compare the engine size of the two sets. The Maserati engines average well under 2.0 litres; the non-Maserati average is more like 3.2 litres.

This disparity is pretty worrisome, particularly if you're a Maserati car manufacturer who's just invested a ton of money in a new factory. People just aren't going to want to buy that vehicle with a dinky little engine when they can get so much more for the same amount of money. As soon as those Car and Driver reviews hit the streets, Mr Maserati is going to be out of business, not to mention the fact that he's gonna lose some serious face on the automotive circuit.

Unless...

He lies about the engine size.

You know how all these cars advertise the engine capacity right on the back of the trunk? Well, one thing our car manufacturer could do is to just slap a little "3.0" where the "1.0" would normally go. Whaddaya think of that? After all, no one will really know about it until well after Mr M has sold a whole mess of under-performing vehicles, made a name for himself, and retired happily to the outskirts of Detroit. The autoworkers might know, but the problems of finding a job in the auto industry are well-known, and Mr. M is paying them far above the market rate. Trust me, most of them won't talk.

But enough about cars.