Excellent query. Nothing specific from an automated point of view, but below are some human-in-the-loop reflections.
Harvard “Boys” Crash, Burn, No Apology
04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Academia, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Impotency
economicprincipals.com
March 27, 2011, David Warsh, Proprietor
A Recent Exercise in Nation-Building by Some Harvard Boys
It was worth a smile at breakfast that morning in February 2006, a scrap of social currency to take out into the world. Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School management guru, had grown famous offering competitive strategies to firms, regions, whole nations. Earlier he had taken on the problems of inner cities, health care and climate change. Now he was about to tackle perhaps the hardest problem of all (that is, after the United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq).
He had become adviser to Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya.
Phi Beta Iota: Harvard is now the poster child for all that is wrong with education–no intelligence, no ethics, and grotesquely expensive. Yale can now claim the mantle in the East.
Safety copy below the line.
Seth Godin on Education Bubble & Alternative
04 Education, Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence
Buying an education or buying a brand?
It's reported that student debt in the USA is approaching a trillion dollars, five times what it was ten years ago.
Are those in debt buying more education or are they seeking better branding in the form of coveted diplomas?
Does a $40,000 a year education that comes with an elite degree deliver ten times the education of a cheaper but no less rigorous self-generated approach assembled from less famous institutions and free or inexpensive resources?
If not, then the money is actually being spent on the value of the degree, on the doors it will open and the jobs it will snag. If this marketing strategy works big, it pays for itself in no time.
A marketing tactic might move the dial, but that doesn't mean it's always worth the money.
The question is whether a trillion dollars is the right amount for individuals to spend marketing themselves. What would happen if people spent it building up a work history instead? On becoming smarter, more flexible, more self-sufficient and yes, able to take more risk because they owe less money…
There's no doubt that we need smarter and more motivated people in our organizations. I'm not sure we need them to be better labeled or more accredited.
Phi Beta Iota: This is why we feel very strongly that a Vice President for Education, Intelligence, & Research is needed; the corollary of this is that Cyber/IO should be about EDUCATION, not about corporate vapor-ware pretending to do attack and defend of systems that are in the proverbial Stone Age.
USA Has Become Deaf, Dumb, and Blind
04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Waste (materials, food, etc)Published on Monday, April 11, 2011 by TruthDig.com
Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System
by Chris Hedges
Note: Truthdig server overwhelmed. This is the Common Dreams reprint.
A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.
Finish reading at CommonDreams
Michael Bloomberg, Vice President for Education, Intelligence, & Research — Creating a Smart Nation
2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated
2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective
1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information
1992 E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & intelligence (An Alternative Paradigm)
Complete Safety Copy Below the Line
Peter Thiel (PayPal) on Education Bubble
04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, Academia, Corruption, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Standards, Waste (materials, food, etc)
JOURNAL: The Education Bubble
Peter Thiel (Paypal and other ventures) has been making some waves for his position that higher education in the US is the next bubble. In short, he's right. Given what we now have available in terms of tools, it should be possible to get an Ivy league education for $20 a month.
Instead we are getting a stagnant product that is so out of date that it doesn't deliver much social and economic value. Even worse: it's undergoing hyper-inflationary price increases.
. . . . . . .
The solution to this problem is to help create employment opportunities (like what we are doing with our open venture start-up) that don't use a degree as a gating mechanism. A solution that creates its own educational modules if needed (from scratch using modern tools and techniques). A solution that delivers something better than an Ivy league eduction and then backs it up with economic and social opportunities that exceed what you get in the global econonomic and social sprawl.
Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.
Sarah Lacy Apr 10, 2011
TechCrunch
Image Source: Mark J. Perry (read article)
Fair warning: This article will piss off a lot of you.
I can say that with confidence because it’s about Peter Thiel. And Thiel – the PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist – not only has a special talent for making money, he has a special talent for making people furious.
. . . . . . .
Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.
Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels.
. . . . . . .
But Thiel’s issues with education run even deeper. He thinks it’s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people’s best hope for a better life on something that is by definition exclusionary.
. . . . . . .
Thiel’s solution to opening the minds of those who can’t easily go to Harvard? Poke a small but solid hole in this Ivy League bubble by convincing some of the most talented kids to stop out of school and try another path. The idea of the successful drop out has been well documented in technology entrepreneurship circles. But Thiel and Founders Fund managing partner Luke Nosek wanted to fund something less one-off, so they came up with the idea of the “20 Under 20″ program last September, announcing it just days later at San Francisco Disrupt. The idea was simple: Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead.
Read entire article by Sarah Lacy….
Phi Beta Iota: Read the chapter “Paradigms of Failure” in ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (EIN, 2008) to understand that the depth and breadth of the integrity failure in the USA. “Credentialling” is a form of top-down sub-prime scam, selling a credential instead of an education. As Thiel suggests, time for change at the top is long over-due.
Reference: Internet Freedom–and Control
03 Economy, 04 Education, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Autonomous Internet, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, Methods & Process, Mobile
Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media
Freedom House 30 March 2009
As internet and mobile phone use explodes worldwide, governments are adopting new and multiple means for controlling these technologies that go far beyond technical filtering. Freedom on the Net provides a comprehensive look at these emerging tactics, raising concern over trends such as the “outsourcing of censorship” to private companies, the use of surveillance and the manipulation of online conversations by undercover agents. The study covers both repressive countries such as China and Iran and democratic ones such as India and the United Kingdom, finding some degree of internet censorship and control in all 15 nations studied.
Phi Beta Iota: Although somewhat dated, the report is worth a look. If overlain with the countries where poverty makes Internet access or control moot, the global picture is clear: despots and poverty are coincident with the physical and digital impoverishment of the people. The emergence on multiple fronts of movement to create the Autonomous Internet using the Open Source Tri-Fecta is encouraging.
Iranian regime’s ‘information fears’
04 Education, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO ImpotencyFreed journalist: Iranian regime's ‘information fears'
Maziar Bahari faces jail if he returns to Iran
Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari was held in a Tehran jail for 118 days in 2009. His arrest came as he worked for western media outlets, including BBC Panorama. In this analysis, Mr Bahari explains why the regime fears information, the internet and a free press.
“Information is a weapon, and in the wrong hands it is even more dangerous than a real gun!”
This was my torturer's message to me in the summer of 2009 after my arrest.
See Also:
- Advanced Cyber/IO (341)
- Autonomous Internet (78)
