Why the Ivy League could end up like the big 3 carmakers: utterly disrupted | Quartz

Source: Why the Ivy League could end up like the big 3 carmakers: utterly disrupted | Quartz, by Joshua Spodek

American universities today deliver facts, abstract analysis, and credentials over developing students into mature citizens. Administrators and faculty also see themselves as authoritative. Universities appear poised to follow the Big 3.

The equivalent for endowed universities isn’t bankruptcy. It’s the world’s top students going elsewhere or forgoing college altogether. While few today could imagine Harvard losing its status, fewer would have imagined General Motors bankrupt either.

US car makers in the 1960s ignored red flags. Universities today face similar warnings. … Universities’ equivalent of Unsafe at Any Speed is Google no longer requiring college diplomas for its employees.

Schools choose what students can study and motivate by authority. Whatever content they teach, behaviorally they teach compliance. Knowledge, analysis, and compliance were valuable generations ago, in the age of the knowledge worker, not when facts are available instantaneously, as today.

While universities increasingly teach entrepreneurship, many teach about entrepreneurship or specific business skills, not how to take initiative. … Universities talk about developing leaders, but teach academic analysis, which doesn’t hurt, but doesn’t develop emotional and social skills either.

How to Keep Kids Excited About School

Source: How to Keep Kids Excited About School | Gallup

Students become much less engaged as they move through middle school to high school.

  • At this school, I get to do what I do best every day.
  • My teachers make me feel my schoolwork is important.
  • I feel safe in this school.
  • I have fun at school.
  • I have a best friend at school.
  • In the last seven days, someone has told me I have done good work at school.
  • In the last seven days, I have learned something interesting at school.
  • The adults at my school care about me.
  • I have at least one teacher who makes me excited about the future.