I was killing time on, errr, time.com, when I came across an article named “10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years” (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1971133_1971110,00.html)
I was reading through the interesting list/articles when I reached one named “The Dropout Economy.” This hit close to home, since I have less than a semester left until I get my degree from Penn State University, and have made no follow up plans to make time to return to Pennsylvania and finish my curriculum. The article points out the rising number of high school and college drop outs, which came as a surprise:
“Middle-class kids are taught from an early age that they should work hard and finish school. Yet 3 out of 10 students dropped out of high school as recently as 2006, and less than a third of young people have finished college,”
Just reading that excerpt alone makes me want to finish the few classes I have left so that I don’t fall in that statistic (and never again talk about my ignominious incompletion of my college career.) But the article takes a mini turn for the better:
“But what if the millions of so-called dropouts are onto something? As conventional high schools and colleges prepare the next generation for jobs that won’t exist, we’re on the cusp of a dropout revolution, one that will spark an era of experimentation in new ways to learn and new ways to live.”
The rest of the article, which you can read from the link above, goes on briefly describing some examples: From farmers mixing modern technology with ancient Mayan techniques (think slash-and-burn) to build a new food distribution system to how my generation handles the retirement finances of the aging boomers.
Well, this article got me thinking on what people believe success and failure are when it comes to education. Do you think that to have a good life in the US, one needs to complete a college education? Of course not, but it will make it easier…or will it? Keeping in mind the changes affecting us this very day (unemployment, market instability/insecurity, outsourcing of jobs, etc), we are , and are bound to be, living in a different environment than the past few decades. Intelligence, to me, is not learned, but acquired, either through birth or through conscious understanding, and college is an institution where this intelligence gets put to work to fill your mind with a wealth of knowledge from all aspects of life. Can one learn on their own all the things one can learn at a university? Yes you can, but with godlike discipline and a very strong will to do so.
Anyways, my point is, our way of life is twisting and turning to fit into the mold formed by today’s environment. I feel, the next couple of years/decades, we will be seeing a lot of success sprouting from non-collegiate atmospheres that will change the way some things work, permanently even, once people who never went to college, or never finished, get out of the mindset of “This is where I belong due to my lack of education.” Analysis and numbers are going to give way to creativity and innovations.
I’m telling you guys, as soon as we start getting comfortable with something, that’s when you have to prepare for change the most. How you adapt, determines your survival.
Have a Happy (and Rainy, and Cold, And Windy if you are in most of the Northeast) Saturday night!
P.S.- First post EVER….so once I get the hang of how to post my thoughts, things will read much smoother =).
Mind on Fire 