From ‘pile on the debt’ to ‘graduating in & out’
Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as saying “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” I believe it. Yet, if this is true, the philosophy of this generation deserves some scrutiny.
Right now the philosophy of government is “pile on the debt” and the philosophy of higher education is also “pile on the debt”.
The world becomes outdated more and more frequently in less and less time. With the age of information and biology right on top of us, the generations referred to in Lincoln’s quote above may be a little tighter knit than in Lincoln’s day.
Today, our government today operates in a very pro-debt and conveyor-belt or rather assembly line fashion. It’s no wonder that our educational model should come to look the same as our government or perhaps the education model was the origin of the government we see today as Lincoln’s quote suggests. In the recently past century or so, students spent 4 years in higher education away from the world, building themselves as products to go out and provide.
But the product of this industrial education model generally required large debt loads, the use of gov. assistance (for which we pay a high price in taxes), scholarships or draining the student’s or parent’s savings. Each of these funding methods is dependent or independent in varying degrees and of course in corresponds to the students disposition.
I would suggest that the majority of the funding and normal living conditions of the college student today increases the student’s dependence on others (both mentally and physically) and that this dependence could be replaced by more powerful ownership based methods. I would further suggest that the government and society we want for our children, as difficult as it may seem, requires just such a shift.
Students will continue to need more education as industries become more interdisciplinary. The rise of interdisciplinary learning seems to conflict with the increasing need for specialized learning, which is also on the rise and they compound the need for a new educational approach that can merge them together. If we keep on our current track, the student owes so much in debt by the time he leaves he pays interest rates that require paying two times the original loan amount. At this rate students can spend the better part of their lives paying for school.
Schools today are becoming more and more integrated with the outside world. Our present situation may require that we further embrace that trend and allow it to work for us, resolving the interdisciplinary, specialization and debt needs. By making this shift we may raise the bar and help to establish a new level international leadership in education.
So what do we do?
One option that emphasizes ownership and which is becoming more do able as new technologies continue to emerge is to cut out the funding middlemen and to change the student’s role. This involves two elements:
1.) A new kind of student that owns his or her education from the beginning to the end. This suggests that students graduate both “in and out” of an education program–more on this below.
2.) A new kind of student and school funding, where the funds are directly connected to the transformation of the student and therefore owned in some respects by the student.
Not all students would choose this type of education. Students choosing this model would enroll on campus twice and only enroll full-time when they owned their education, their house, their time and many other basic aspects of life.
Students would also graduate twice, the first graduation would occur after completing the academic requirements of his or her program and the second once he or she had substantially contributed to the chosen fields of specialized study. This latter graduation would occur in conjunction with multiple people or institutions concurrently in the student’s field of focus.
Example of a “New Student’s” Schedule:
1st yr students might spend their time this way:
1/3 earning (20 hrs)
1/3 studying (20 hrs)
1/3 residual (20 hrs residual type income or skill set that increases income)
Working his way out of a job so that he can study a greater percentage of the time.
2nd yr students may to spend his time this way:
1/2 earning (30 hrs)
1/4 studying (15 hrs)
1/4 residual/impact (15 hrs)
3rd year students should be in a different place:
1/6 earning (10 hrs)
1/2 studying/impact (30 hrs)
1/3 impact/residual (20 hrs)
4-6th years or even up to 10th year students gradually merge the 30 hours of studying and 20 hours of impact. When they graduate there would really not be a very great change in their lives:
1/10 Earning (5 hrs)
9/10 Study/impact (45 hrs)
Family-life may be the only trump card and even the time constraint involved with a family becomes less of an obstacle when ownership, training and education are all set on autopilot.
Higher-education schooling may take a person 2+ extra years following this model. But once students are out, they are empowered with zero debt, a powerful education and with momentum in many areas, including the habit of learning while providing.
This is what might be called both graduating in and graduating out of school and a school can design their program to foster this approach. So, what is it that limits us to 4 years of undergraduate schooling and a few years of graduate work? Was this tradition a result of the pre-industrial and industrial eras, solidified by the industrial machine, its assembly line and conveyor belt?
Summing it up:
Students may not now have the luxury of waiting until after college to “make a difference” or get out of debt—and maybe that’s OK. Was it actually a luxury? And, do we want the philosophy of government to change for our children and the generations that follow?
