Sam This "Whatever the education source, it should be judged mostly on it's capacity to serve students by helping them learn to provide for themselves and bootstrap and build new infrastructure (manufacturing and technology, food, energy, scientific research, humanities, social sciences, etc) that can help others coming along do the same." is AWESOME. You should post it somewhere. I totally agree that the only value in an education system is when it produces new shared infrastructure. MIT syllabi online, Social Media Classroom, etc. There are plenty of examples. Not to mention the fact that DURING schooling is a great time to put students to work on OPEN infrastructure. There is a book by Michael Perelman "Steal This Idea" that has a section that talks about how most schools do the exact opposite. They make students sign non-disclosure agreements to take classes that are funded by private corporations to build infrastructure that is then patented and turned over to those corporations. Private corporations co-opting public education is the exact opposite of requiring education to be about making and sharing openly. -p On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 10:22 AM, Samuel Rose <[email protected]> wrote:
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 9:44 AM, Douglas Rushkoff <[email protected]> wrote:
This is great. I hope people go to the other sites for proposals on ways out.
For student debt, there are 2 culprits here:
1. The private finance companies and the federal government who are overcharging, or charging people for debt on education not delivered.
2. The schools themselves who are at this point bilking people out of huge amounts of money by clearly not giving them the skills they would need to take advantage of the market as it is now (not as it was 30-40 years ago. Or even worse, a training for someone's fantasy about how things should be, but are not).
In some cases, the debts are still held by the schools, in some cases government, in some cases finance companies/banks. In all cases, a political action such as a strike could target demanding all 3 waive some or all of existing student debt.
Equally as important would be a way for students and people in communities to provide an alternate financing route for education. This alternative financing route could offer a plurality of assistance for students (food, energy, perhaps even some forms of health care) by means other than just loaning money. Assistance should be contingent on a thorough review of the school itself, and that it is providing an appropriate education at a reasonable price. There should be a good chance that students would be able to do more than just get a "job" (at any level) with this education. Non-traditional university education routes should hold equal footing with existing universities in this alternate education assistance system. Whatever the education source, it should be judged mostly on it's capacity to serve students by helping them learn to provide for themselves and bootstrap and build new infrastructure (manufacturing and technology, food, energy, scientific research, humanities, social sciences, etc) that can help others coming along do the same.
On Oct 30, 2011, at 10:00 PM, Eric Sanders wrote:
Check this out! http://occupystudentdebt.com/ Best, Eric
-- -- Sam Rose Hollymead Capital Partners, LLC Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451 email: [email protected] http://hollymeadcapital.com http://p2pfoundation.net http://futureforwardinstitute.com http://socialmediaclassroom.com
"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition." - Carl Sagan
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