[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

I hate to be unbelievably pessimistic, but I think it only changes when it fails completely, but I'm not 100% sure what that looks like because there's good evidence that it's already in failure.

I agree with this. I was talking more from the angle of what I think we should do, not what I think we will do.

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

I mean we do basically have that in most areas but people don't realize it. Tech schools and community colleges provide free to near free opportunities for further education and training in trades. I feel like if we integrate it more, give seniors a choice to seamlessly choose the training that desire, it might be utilized more.

Do you have any specific ideas on how to integrate it more? I'm not really sure what that looks like.

Originally Posted by bob

I think another issue is that we all need to come together and decide whether or not college is education or job training.

Agree. Trying to be both is a great way to do neither well.

Originally Posted by Edward64

What is it you think are .... "the advantages that college once had have been eclipsed/made irrelevant by technological and societal change"?

Originally Posted by Rainmaker

You said education is important and then said we need to do away with college without really offering an alternative.

I don't have a completely clarified vision on what the result should look like. What I do know, to Edward's point, is that our current higher education system came into being around the time of the Industrial Revolution and served society well at that time. I don't think it does so any longer, for similar reasons that we don't do many other aspects of society the way we would have 150+ years ago. Urban planning is much different, we import and export goods in the global economy on a much larger scale, the ability to adapt with a much faster rate of technological change is important, what we think of as modern medicine was simply unknown then, on and on one could go.

As it relates directly to education:

- I don't think the Primary Education - Higher Education - Workforce Entry model makes sense anymore. Rather, continuing education throughout life is critical. Moreso in some professions than others for sure, but I think it's valuable to all people capable of being educated (the relatively small percentage who unfortunately are not is another matter), and so a system in which education happens alongside professional life as opposed to mostly preceeding it is more appropriate for the current rate of change that technological advance has presented us with.

- Memorizing facts is not nearly as important as it was, as we have devices that can give us all the facts and figures we want at our fingertips, and increasingly efficiently. The goal of education needs to shift to how to apply that knowledge.

- I don't think building grand complexes/compounds where students go, pay an exorbitant amount for living quarters/books/exploding administrative fees/etc. is appropriate in this world. There are practical exceptions for training for certain careers, but most general education at a minimum has no reason to need to happen in person. It can and should be done remotely. In this manner a much smaller number of educators can reach a much larger group of learners, as we already see happening in various forms of social media. There's no good reason why we can't get a lot more education done at a much lower price. Remote learning should IMO by the normative method.

I've personally learned more in my adult life than I ever did as a student simply because I sought it out in the age of the internet where so much information is available. There's also a lot of misinformation as well; I'm not suggesting a free-for-all. Education needs to move at the pace of technological advance, and the only way it can do that is to be a constant process. A traditional multi-year degree done immediately after high school is not appropriate to a dynamic society like this, but rather a more stagnant one that has long since been a relic of the past.