Death of the Four Year Degree?

College graduation rates will peak then drop precipitously in the next 20 years.  The steady rise in the number of college grads has steadily risen for decades, but the proliferation of online learning that is cheap to free will cause a demand shift for work-ready skills training.  

 Fast Company published a story this month about how online courses are challenging the way universities are doing business. 

I have been around higher ed for some time, both as a student and as a faculty developer working with curriculum design - and now as an Extension educational media and online curriculum developer.  Universities are, by nature, giant slow moving beasts.  

So - the nimble, fast paced world of private entrepreneurial visionaries have once again monetized what was once the purview of university life.  The article tells the story of two Stanford professors who quit their appointments to pursue online curriculum development. If more visionary academics evolve into entrepreneurs, universities lag and the private sector wins.  This naturally means that the consumer should also win.  

This means that the very meaning of what it means to be an educated person will shift dramatically in the next 20 years.  Paper in a frame on the wall won't mean anything.  It already doesn't mean much except that you can jump through bureacratic hoops and wear a goofy hat while walking across a stage.  Perhaps those who study college student psychological development would disagree, but the four years between high school and B.S. become less important when you have spent more time and money getting skills that may or may not get you a job.  

Being educated will come to mean that you have skills in your field and that you can learn new things and retool without blinking.  It will have nothing to do with your an alma mater. It will certainly have nothing to do with whether you completed political science, public speaking, and two lab science courses as part of your core university curriculum. 

Because barriers to acquiring work ready skills are being removed, and access to high quality education is more open, and universities are hopelessly slow to adjust - the market will shift and universities will begin to see a decline in enrollment then in graduation numbers.  Smart people will get skills from more nimble sources directed not at general knowledge but at today's work ready skills. 

The gauntlet is thrown.  Bravo, private developers! 

Now for Extension to get more market-demand oriented.  

What Not to Wear: Graduate School

I was talking the other day with my new Boss about my new job and my new work responsibilities when a woman walked by  - she would have been a perfect candidate for Stacey London and Clinton Kelly to fashion bomb right at that moment.  She was perfect:  black too-short double-knit slacks, frizzy hair with grey roots, shapeless faded purple t-shirt, intently watching her white Stride Rites hit the floor in front of her, dingy North Face backpack trailing behind, WalMart bagged lunch in hand.

He asked me an odd question just after she passed:  "Why is it that when people get their Ph.D. that they either lose their common sense or their ability to dress themselves?"  I LOL'd -quietly because the What Not To Wear team was surely standing by - and then he looked at me and asked me how it was that I had lost neither of those two things.

My wardrobe the past year of grad school and first year of my new dream job!

I've been asked to prepare a talk for graduate students on the basics of success in graduate school.  This is something I know a little about, as I have three graduate degrees which made it possible to now be working in my dream job!

Part of my talk is about fashion.  I must say that it is a bit difficult to articulate what graduate students SHOULD be wearing to class and to work, but it is not at all difficult to articulate what they SHOULD NOT be wearing to class and to work.

Graduate school is about becoming part of a profession, not about learning stuff or writing a thesis or dissertation. All of the classes and tests and papers are just the multi-year job interview with yourself to make sure that jumping into a new career is the right thing for you.  Graduate school is about immersing yourself into the culture of your profession.  That includes learning to dress like your peers.

My Mom tells the story of her first college years at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  It's quite a conservative place, and female student in the 1960's were required to wear skirts and pantyhose to class every day.  Men were required to wear ties.  She didn't much like it then, but she remembers that when she started working full time that she felt that her ORU dress code had given her an advantage.  She was already comfortable in work clothes.  She could focus on being awesome at work (not her words, but my Mom IS awesome at work...)

I will say this - my Faculty Advisor loves her fashion.  Since she was my mentor, I took up her love for dressing to the 9's along with all of her years of research acumen.  Also, in my job, I have to be ready to meet with bigwigs in suits and clients in the business world and be ready to impress them with both my words and my appearance.  During my grad student days, I learned both of those things from the best!

That's the point I'm trying to make here with my talk.  Dress for the job you want, and when you get it (because you have looked the part for years and years) you'll be comfortable in your clothes.  People will respect you more for it, and you might just get more opportunities as a graduate student because of it.

Bottom line:  DRESS FOR THE JOB YOU WANT, NOT THE JOB YOU HAVE.  

...even if that job is multiple years and multiple degrees away.

And folks who have never been to a day of graduate school in their lives won't suspect that you have a graduate degree (much less multiple degrees) because you've not lost your common sense nor your ability to dress yourself!

Kick Something's Butt Every Day

Today was a bit of a workplace nightmare.  Your boss being on vacation only guarantees that a week of workplace bliss will be followed by several days of workplace chaos.  This was Day 1.  After a morning of nothing to do (remember this is only my 3rd Monday of a highly technical job for which I am still training), the afternoon hit.  I had told a colleague that I was afraid I would soon have more than enough to handle on my to-do list.  


Just after lunch, a flurry of email snowed me under for the rest of the afternoon - it will spill over into tomorrow.  I have a stack of papers to process through waiting for my prompt 8 a.m. arrival.  One of those emails led me like Alice through Wonderland, digging through stacks and stacks of forms, tracing through data files and subfolders I didn't organize (IF I had organized them, I would have gone right to what I needed).  


I started feeling overwhelmed, and by 4:30, I was almost in tears because of my lack of success.  I decided that I needed to kick something's butt today and finish the report.  After visiting my very well rested and happy looking boss, I systematically replicated his procedures, and on the third time running the data,  things came out just fine.  


After all, kicking something's butt must be on everyone's to-do list every day.  I wonder what it will be tomorrow...

Pride comes before...the epic fail

This video and photo don't do this moment justice.  Seeing the moment from this angle doesn't communicate the utter hilarious failure of the runner in the orange jersey - read on, friends -  



Too soon to cruise...



This race was part of the Big 12 Indoor Track and Field Championships last weekend.  (I was fortunate enough to have tickets on the finish line! – Thank you, Johny!)   This is a photo of the finish of the men’s mile run. 

Let me set the scene: 

Indoor track meets are interesting events in and of themselves because there are twice as many laps in every event because the track is only 200 meters, so for the mile, there are 8 laps.  After several of these long races, and because there are six field events going on simultaneously, people get a little ADD and start not paying attention, but this, my friends, was like a visual magnet – you know, like how everything suddenly gets deathly quiet as you make a loud and awkward comment about something and then everyone looks at you…

Ok, back to the scent - the OSU kid (the runner in the orange jersey with #3 – heretofore known as Mr. OSU #3) had led the race for 7 ¾ laps, and you can see how close the other runners are to him – the pack was no more than ten yards spread the whole time.  It was a very close, very predictable and, well, boring race. 

Until…

It was the last homestretch, and Mr. OSU #3 glanced over his right shoulder, to the outside, and saw no one was competing with him for the last 10 yards, so he kicked it into cruising gear for that last little stretch.  Just then, Rico Loy (that’s really his name, poor thing – the runner from Iowa State), pushes through on the inside, just as Mr. OSU #3 raised his hand in this pointed victory gesture. The crowd of 2000 erupted in laughter and then in applause as Rico pulled ahead of presumptuous Mr. OSU #3  to win the race in the last three yards as Mr OSU #3 saw Rico pass. 

OSU #3 turned as red as I have ever seen another human being who hasn’t been at Padre Island for Spring Break, and he stayed that color even through the medals presentation several minutes later. Of course, he should have been that embarrassed for wearing such a god-awful color (I’m sure that their color blind coach or T. Boone Pickens chose the shade of hunter’s orange for these jerseys). 

It kinda served him right, though – you gotta keep it going through the finish!

This was not the only demonstration of this principle on this day – the Kansas State high jumper was trying to set the number one high jump mark in the nation, so the announcer kept drawing everyone’s attention to him before he jumped, and he made the crowd clap in unison before he started – well, every time he did this, he failed miserably.  Every time no one seemed to be watching, he was marevelously flawless in his approach and in his form – it was like watching the sun shine it was so natural and perfect.  Until he tried to show off for the crowd. 

So, what’s the takeaway here? 

Pride comes before the fail –

and don’t rest on your laurels
if your laurels are still 10 yards away. 

http://www.cyclones.com/mediaPortal/player.dbml?catid=-2&id=849912
this link is to the video of Rico talking about the race - he's not a great interview, but hey, not everyone can be stellar at everything -