As accelerating change transforms the way we learn, innovate and
network, traditional social institutions will be forced to adjust.
Some will successfully make the transition, most won’t.
Universities, in particular, will need to completely re-think
their models as youth are lured away by new income and
actualization opportunities.
While it’s possible that some schools will be able to change
with the times, here are 5 compelling reasons why your kid (born in
2002) probably won’t be going away to college in 2020:
1. Prevalence of Teenage Millionaires: With
more and more people making money online, an explosion of
user-generated content platforms like Second Life and Spore and the
ongoing rise in value of human capital, a boom in teenage
millionaires will be old news by 2020. Pressured by their peers
to roll the dice and strike it rich, kids will opt out of college
and probably even high school. Parents will be loving it.
2. Distributed Distance Learning: People are
already taking classes via virtual worlds. By 2020 there will be
millions of rich, interactive
courses offered online. This will allow kids to learn from
anyone anywhere and will moot campus-based learning.
3. Pervasive Education: The advent of the
semantic web, Artificial
Intelligence and new learning software will mean that kids are
effectively attending college at every moment of their lives.
4. Corporate Poachers: Google is already
tapping into the middle school market via contests. 2020
will see companies more aggressively recruiting kids straight out
of high school and paying them to learn while on the job.
5. Enhanced Info Input: Brain implants,
new attention mastery techniques, powerful learning software and
better understanding of brain development will conspire to let kids
learn much more in a shorter span. To the average future kid, the
current notion of college will feel like swimming through a pool of
molasses.
While this doesn’t mean you should hop on a plane and go blow
your kid’s college fund in Vegas, it does
suggest that at some point you may want to consider allocating some
of it to alternative learning programs and new technologies. As our
environment undergoes changes, so too must the methods and
structure we employ to teach our youth to navigate it.
An interesting piece of news floating around the Internet these days is the creation of the seemingly unbelievable Amethyst Initiative. The group, endorsed by college and university presidents across the nation, aims to bring the drinking age back into the national discourse. “Amethyst Initiative presidents and chancellors call upon elected officials to weigh all the consequences of current alcohol policies and to invite new ideas on how best to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol use.” They don’t necessarily call for the outright lowering of the drinking age to 18, but they do say that our current drinking laws just aren’t working. 
While the problems attributed to the current drinking age by the Amethyst Initiative are numerous, what would lowering the drinking age do for our culture of binge-drinking?
For one thing, introducing people to drinking at a younger age would hopefully take away the entertainment of getting drunk. So many college freshmen, amazed that they can go from the home atmosphere of restrictive drinking to unlimited drinking, spend their time treating alcohol like a new amusement park ride. Going to keggers where Natural Light or Pabst Blue Ribbon flows like water (it is water), getting upperclassmen to buy half-gallons of plastic-bottled vodka for mixing with god knows what, and of course getting so drunk people have to carry you home or even the hospital.
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Ask not for whom the bell tolls, because the bell is
tolling for textbooks. Amazon has announced that it is releasing
two new
Kindle devices and in doing so, may have killed the college
textbook.
Ah, the college textbook. So valuable, so hated, and yet, so
loved. I remember my favorite textbook – a complete history of the
making of the atomic bomb. It was red, had bent edges (from a
previous owner, but I wasn’t jealous) and weighed enough to serve
as a bludgeoning device. The idea that future generations might be
missing out on such a wonderful experience, sniff, just
breaks my heart.
But, despite our love of our hefty friends, time might be
running out. What will the new Kindle mean for students?
Higher Prices, Not Lower - Contrary to popular
sentiment, the annihilation of printed textbooks could actually
mean increased expenses for students. After all, the actual
textbook data will have to be encrypted better than most credit
card transactions. What stops someone from getting the latest
edition of Philosophy 101 off of uTorrent? Nothing.
It Must be Cheap - If there’s one thing to be
learned from the music industry, it’s that the price of the data
has to be low… or at least low enough so students won’t result to
illegal means to get their materials. Even the most secure textbook
will likely be pirated and made freely downloadable – an
irresistible temptation for students staring at a $500 per-quarter
textbook bill.
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