I arrived at Starbucks after my morning workout here in La Quinta, CA and I realized that I wanted to get my earbuds from my bike. I went out and unzipped the pannier and found this screen cloth that indicates Rowan University Alumni. Sadly, this screen wipe is the most valuable thing that my daughter has taken from Rowan and continues to use. Now hold on there all you Profs out there. Don’t get your panties in a twist. I think that my daughter was able to become and incredible artist because of her time at Rowan. I believe that it mostly comes from the students who were around her that helped her become great. So, what’s my beef??
In the richness of the 21st Century connected world, Rowan allowed her to rack up over $100,000 in student debt without supplying her with any 21st Century skills to use that education to pay it back. As a matter of fact, she feels useless. If we are not going to build in to the education itself a way to make that education pay for itself in every major then the very institutions of education are obsolete and will go the way of the dinosaur.
The symptom of this crisis just played out at the location of my former employer. They are faced with shrinking enrollment and as a result have a funding crisis. They chose to eliminate Advanced Placement classes of less than 12 students to save money. The community fought back they are back. Why?? So they can pass a test??? There is so much more content in an AP class that it precludes in depth study of anything. School should affect the student and help mold the character that they will become instead of making them a clone of the perfect academic. I am reminded of the quote from La La Land when Ryan Gosling’s character said of Los Angeles that they “worship everything but value nothing”.
The world in which we live today has a “shrinking job market”. The colleges will tell you that everyone needs more education to compete for these fewer jobs. The result…same mathematics on the job front…only more debt…more student debt…that can’t be paid back.
It’s time to stop the insanity. We need to take a good look at what we are doing in education and redirect our efforts into classes for the masses. Sadly, this is not STEM. What we need is Business, Arithmetic, History, Arts, and Language. BAHAL!! Sounds like a religion. Maybe if it was a religion, we would attract the worshipers of our society. I am not objecting to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Yes they are necessary for our modern day society…but we also need to use today’s technology to create enough value in ourselves and then have guidance on how to set that up that technology to “work for us” so that we can live in a world without jobs. A world without jobs is not the same as a world without value or a world without prosperity.
The problem is that the longer we live with yesterday’s philosophy to address today’s problems, we will continue to dig a hole that will end up swallowing us all. Wow. Looks like I left out Philosophy. How does BAPHAL strike you?