Colleges Under Assault from the Real World

For many young people in North America, college is a place to go to party, to get away from the stresses of the real world for as long as possible, before entering the workforce.  But the outside world has a way of slipping through the bricks and mortar, bringing with it the cold winds of reality -- there may be no jobs for them when they leave partytown.

1.) Money – As the cost of colleges skyrockets, student loans and financing are becoming harder to get.

2.) Courses – Our existing semester and quarter-based college schedules are a poor match for today’s plugged-in, hyper-jacked students. Passed down from generations past, the current timetables for courses spread out over 8-12 weeks only works for an increasingly small segment of society, leaving most working adults to fend for themselves.

3.) Teachers – As new economic realities hits college campuses, their first impulse will be to cut staff. Some will attempt to limit the damage to wage freezes and curtailed hiring, but others will begin to roll out the pink slips.

4.) Classrooms – There has long been the pervasive notion that learning can only take place in a classroom. Even though schools use field trips and outdoor experiences to enhance education, the classroom remains a dominant central fixture in education today....However, classroom-centric education is not necessary for learning. Our need to physically “gather at the feet of the master” will be replaced with faster, easier systems for connecting thoughts and ideas.

5.) Credits - ...Credit-granting authority will be the most difficult area for outsiders to penetrate. But rest assured, when the economic foundation of colleges begins to feel shaky, the creative opportunists will begin to emerge.

6.) Status – Academic elites have long been drinking the Kool-Aid, espousing the gospel of superior standing in one’s community that can only be achieved through diplomas and scholarly achievement. With a record numbers of college graduates now unemployed and under-employed, the bragging rights have begun to tarnish. _ColoradoBiz_via_ImpactLab

University has been a refuge for dysfunctional adults as well. I am referring, of course to humanities and social sciences professors. As the assault on the well-entrenched redoubts of higher indoctrination proceeds, we may have the opportunity to watch many of these sinecured and self-assured brain binders turned out into the cold cruel world of real work.

Amusingly enough, it is the economic devastation driven by the political agenda of these societally superfluous profs that is squeezing college budgets and forcing many of the coming cuts in college employment. The average voter is not feeling very charitable toward tenured bureaucrats and academics with fat salaries and pensions -- particularly if he or someone he knows happens to be among the 20% or more unemployed or underemployed.

The prosperity that built the huge North American empire of education can be quickly wiped out by an Obama - Mugabe - Chavez style of bankrupting "social justice." But it is when the academics start losing their jobs as a result of their own agenda that "social justice" acquires its sweet ironic overtones.