Education - Broken Institutions Must Change Their DNA

Nowhere is the evidence of institutional breakdown clearer than in education. For the first time in US history, Americans ages 25 to 34 are less likely to be "well-educated" by traditional definition, than the generation that preceded them.

College tuition and fees have risen three times as fast as the median family income. The National Center for Public Policy and Education reported this month that tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007. Median family incomes rose by just 147 percent during the same time. At private universities the price tags and increases are even higher.

Hanging on to all outdated means and methods of "delivering" education, the solution proposed by most educators is to provide even more funding to this broken system. As Greg Whitby notes, educators have spent the 20th century perfecting a 19th  century model. The DNA of education is still founded on command and control tactics largely centered on irrelevant assumptions of the industrial revolution. We have to change that DNA and when we witness the disconnect off affordable education, it only proves this point.