From the UC student protests over fee hikes, to community colleges holding midnight classes due to increased demand, to repeated warnings from business and policy leaders that we are not graduating enough competitive workers, America is facing a crisis in higher education.
Why? Because the last great social shift to impact higher education was back in 1944 with the introduction of the GI Bill that transformed access to higher education for many generations following.
Today, technology and communication advances have transformed everything from ecommerce (Amazon.com) to interpersonal relationships (Match.com) over the past 20 years, while higher education remains constrained in the old industrial factory model.
Unable to graduate the number of applicants who are seeking degrees, higher education institutions still rely on a linear approach to education - tied to a fixed infrastructure, limited by financial, space and time constraints, and measuring success by increases in endowments and publishing rather than increases in student achievement.
If higher education were a company today, it would still be Henry Ford's first automobile factory when instead it ought to resemble Apple - fully leveraging today's technology and information resources both off-line and online in the home and at work--for all stages of life.
Now is the time for another great shift - to rethink higher education and create a fresh vision and new model for learning.
Imagine a world where higher education doesn't end with a diploma, but starts at 18 and continues through life, as the world changes around us. Imagine a United States where we can dramatically increase the number of citizens who can access higher education in just a few years by combining the full power of technology and the Internet with the best teaching and learning approaches in the world to craft a student-centered educational ecosystem.
To be sure, there will be a some need to continue with the existing academic institutions that we know of today. However, there is a greater need to rethink how education is delivered throughout one's lifetime. We believe in creating a student-centric initiative for a new ecosystem around high education that blends the best of Silicon Valley, entrepreneurial thinking and higher education. Changing higher education in America must begin with changing the conversation we are having about it and now is the time to initiate dialogue, ideation and action around rethinking higher education and the policies, infrastructure and innovations needed to reinvent it.
We already have all the intellectual, technological and entrepreneurial resources we need to bring our higher education system into the 21st century and ensure it serves all of our citizens. We just need to begin the dialogue to do it.
Overall, our universities do a remarkable job.
Corporations will always complain about not having enough of the right kind of workers. They want the federal government to import all the foreign labor they want into the US because that would drive down wages (more supply leads to lower demand and thus lower prices for labor). So only a fool listens to corporate interests on this point.
If there really was a shortage of labor then wages would be rising. Wages have been stagnant for the past 10 years (since H-1B was started). Federal regulation of labor markets is the last thing we need.
I am not against this idea of where to put these people, what makes me unhappy is they start life with a huge debt and no way to pay it.
I suggest a few new ways, ones that work and help. The first is along the lines of the military programs there is a program that teaches both military, medical and disaster response to students. This would then in the chance of emergency have many more trained individuals for police protection, water treatment, medical help and safety. A four year program, they would serve two weeks each summer for fifteen years.
A specialized school in the field of your choice. Four years are compressed into one year at the end you would be put under a two year program that when completed with full pay would give you your full degree. Many students, especially older ones are interested in the degree not the social life.
Finally I would also suggest a program that pays for two thirds your education where you are in the Minute man guard. A military force that can not be sent out of country but can be called up for six months every two years.
Casey
One issue in higher education is that so many foreign students are able to get a high quality education here while so many Americans are not, and those graduates get jobs here that Americans can't get...not that we shouldn't encourage everyone to seek a higher education and to be productive, just that more Americans need support for their education and deserve to be given preference for the jobs that are available.
Another significant issue that has come to the fore as a result of the financial crisis, is the way MBA programs promote the pursuit of short-term profit goals to the detriment of sustainable growth and service to mankind. Profits trumping people has been the theme of business during the last few decades. As we now see, this has been very destructive of the general standard of living and the environment.