A Coming Change in College Learnings?

The Coming College Revolution

The following article is from the National Center for Policy Analysis:

The traditional college model will soon be transformed into one that is more flexible, cheaper and mobile, according to the Economist.

Most students still recognize the benefit of a college education, with a degree increasing lifetime incomes by as much as $590,000 in net-present-value. However, even though colleges and universities are churning out millions of graduates this year, rising costs, changing demand and emerging technology are leading to a “reinvention of the university.”

• The cost of higher education has been rising by 1.6 percentage points more than inflation every year over the past two decades, due in part to government funding and the premium employers place on degrees.
• According to an Oxford University study, nearly half of all occupations are at risk of becoming automated in the next few decades, meaning that people will need to strengthen their human capital.
• Technology enables students to be educated at fraction of the cost of attending a university. “Massive Open Online Courses” (MOOCs) allow colleges to offer cheaper classes to employees and students.

These three forces will lead to more prestigious colleges selling their MOOCs around the world. Mediocre schools, on the other hand, may see decreased revenue and school closures. While this might hurt those schools, the new model could benefit students, reducing the costs of higher education and making it more accessible to students, including older workers in need of retraining.

Source: “Creative Destruction,” Economist, June 28, 2014.

Comment:  The quality of ‘learning’ at the American  college and university as well as at the grade levels below, has dramatically collapsed over the past three generations.  Lefty religious devotions have replaced learning knowledge with lefty thought and deed,   A through Z.    The  cause was transformed  to teach the unlearned   freedom to remain  unlearned  parallel to  the moral and intellectual standards of so many who claim to teach in any of these fields…..with the possible exception of  studies confined to the natural sciences.   Americans should enjoy all the freedoms of animal life without the worry of  consequences is the call.

Two and two still equal 4, but today’s  lefties in politics and education  would blast  your  prejudice, your bigotry  of  dangerous thinking here  , for so does three plus  one, or seven minus 2 plus 6 minus seven ……as part of their training for  “political correctness”.    Lefties feel vastly superior in college  prompting   others to learn their quickness of  verbal  language.    It is the speed of this  language not its accuracy or honesty that matters when communicating  in the modern American world,  they exclaim, with proof   pointing  so frequently to the true professor of these skills,   Barack Obama presently of the White House.

I was well educated by my old maid public school teachers throughout the 1940s.  One had to learn knowledge then in order  to become closer to God, the origin and center of all knowledge, and to make better choices at the ballot box,to ensure a stronger America,  I was told.   (It turned out to be quite true, I discovered even when I was still a Democrat.   I entered the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota the autumn of 1952.   Tuition was $65 per quarter which included $10 to cover required Health Service access each quarter.   First rate well educated professors taught classes with healthy command of subject matter, the American experience,  and the English language.