Are colleges and universities preparing us for a world that no longer exists? (Hint: the dropouts are the smart ones!)

But what if the millions of so-called dropouts are onto something? As conventional high schools and colleges prepare the next generation for jobs that won’t exist, we’re on the cusp of a dropout revolution, one that will spark an era of experimentation in new ways to learn and new ways to live.

The Dropout Economy - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years - TIME (via mikehudack)

lessin: as someone who did the opposite of dropping out, i find a lot of this very compelling.

whit adds: while the specifics are dated, go read Hunter Thompson’s 1965 essay The Nonstudent Left — parts of it will definitely resonate.

via tumblr.absono.us

This made me think about what my own time at university prepared me for--not much. I finished film school just in time to see the medium of (physical) film enter it's death throws as digital video began to take hold. I also found my film school to do a pretty lousy job of preparing any of us for the real world of film making. It never told us how to find investors, didn't make us take a single class on marketing and even it's instruction on the nuts and bolts of film making was limited to very little actual hands-on teaching--it amounted to a lot of lectures about chapters in books we had to read.

My point is that, I think for years (possibly decades) there has been a disconnect between what schools teach and what the world requires of us. There was a guy on "Colbert Report" a few months back who wrote a book that advanced the idea that our colleges had produced an entire generation of fools who are now in control of our country--from government to big business, they talk the confident, qualified talk, but their actions betray their lack of good sense. I wish I could remember the name of that guy and his book. :\ I really want to read it now.

Regardless, that Time Magazine article seems right to me--but specifically about earning--we're entering into a new economic world where experimentation will discover new ways for us to make money and survive (or maybe even how to survive without having to making money--wouldn't that be nice?).

Posted via web from thepete's posterous