Future of American Edu-Ma-Cation

I will not share this. It is confidential between us. I thank you for your honest opinion.

What is going to happen according to MIT economist Lester Thurow in his 1995 study The Future of Capitalism predicts employers are going to look for hard certifications in specific skills. For example, a degree in accounting will have no value without a C.P.A. certification. This will happen in all fields of study. The reason is collapsing standards. Employers no longer knoe what a degree means in too many cases, and as a result they are going to look for hard certification testing to verify skills.

Also, in time, superior academics will not look for careers in academics, but they will move into other fields, e.g. business, where they get an adequate return on their hard work to earn hard degrees.

Last year a university fired me for expecting students to do homework! Yes, teachers are let go because students do not want to do homework. It is easier to replace teachers than to replace tuition; it is about tuition now in far too many cases, not learning. The place that fired me now wants me back because it needs my credentials to keep its accreditation. Can you imagine! You throw a person overboard and six months later you want him or her to crawl back.

We measure up or we measure down. Or, as I put it, duty is missing as a concept in our culture, values, today. Duty means there is something bigger than self and it underscores what I owe this greater entity. Measuring up to standards is an example.

Rights, on the other hand, focus on what I get. Duty means you must give, and rights mean you get. Entitlement of academic grades without study is an example.

A society obsessed with rights, getting instead of duty giving, will sooner or later destroy itself. Our society is out of balance. Our degenerate educational systems is an example.

Winston S. Churchill observed duty is the greatest word in the human language for it reminds us that we are not the center, be-all and end-all of the human race. We have value, God-given value, of course, but we also cannot expect to simply take without giving. We in the end cannot expect to learn something without studying. Input is required in order to get output.

In fact, we owe a duty to the society that supports and protects us as helpless infants and children. This duty means we do not expect something for nothing, rights without duties. No society can endure such an entitlement mentality and systematic parasitic behavior.

Sadly, this is the condition of America in 2010. The coming Greatest Depression is going to remove the surplus wealth that has allowed this wholesale getting something for nothing behavior. It is going to be a different world shortly.