Saturday, January 21, 2012

Coming to Your College Soon - Change!

Check your map, the exit is coming up pretty quickly!
Education is notorious for systemic change and national emergencies prompting the change.  We had to improve schools to defend ourselves from another world war, from people settling on the moon and taking pot shots at us and the Japanese, Chinese, Swedes, whatever doing better in tests than us.  There were other national emergencies, but those were probably the most publicized.   

The systemic change hasn't resulted in changes in curriculum or teaching methods as much as getting more women and minorities in college, more funding for lower socioeconomic students, preparing more students for college, bringing in technology on all levels of learning, research and tools, and changing the role of professor to researcher and publisher.

Now we are looking at another change coming up.  This one will be big.  The national emergency is different, we have run out of money and student debt is the national crisis.  We gotta rethink this.

What needs to happen?  Here are my best guesses:

Community colleges and technical colleges will get an infusion of money to produce a quick workforce for manufacturing, product development, support services in new industries, and  replacing an aging workforce.

Industry will aggressively partner with community and technical colleges to create Company Colleges that can retool, update, and inspire workers.

Community colleges are going to beat the tar out of four year colleges because of lower rates of education.

Four year colleges will become more concentrated on building curriculum that will produce graduates that can get jobs because accreditation and state agencies will use this as a measurement of success.

Community, technical and four year colleges are going to take over high schools, or at least dip down into the academically ready students and entice them into college programs.

Ok, give me a year and I'll re-post this and see what is starting to happen.



 

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