Free Risky is the New Safe by Randy Gage

institutions will diminish and demand may indeed lessen. Transformative academies like HPU will prosper while transactional ones living only in the past may suffer. The real growth opportunity will be in making a college education affordable and available to the masses (who otherwise may not have pursued it). That is where you now see online classes and the like flourish.
    The “Ivies” [Ivy League universities] will do fine in spite of everything, the HPUs (very few of them out there—we’re close to unique in some ways) will grow because they are nimble, responsive, provide value, and interpret that value in ways that produce productive outcomes. The smaller schools that drown in an ocean of sameness may indeed meet very tough (if not catastrophic) times.
    Yet, even forward-thinking institutions like High Point will need to reinvent a lot about what they do. You’ll find a great deal of proud proclamations on their website about the huge increase in buildings and acreage on campus. How those kinds of investments will pay off in the digital world remains to be seen. (We can safely assume that at least one of those buildings is a library, housing books like dictionaries. The average kid today not only has no idea what a dictionary is, but would never have a need to know how to use one.)
    We do know one thing for certain: Creating success in the new economy will require students to take much more responsibility for their own education. They’ll need to make it less about degrees and more about practical application.
    Nations such as India, Japan, Korea, and some other Asian countries are placing a renewed focus on education. They are churning out scores of college grads who are highly trained in very relevant fields like programming, gaming, biotechnology, environmental engineering, and entrepreneurship (taught by real entrepreneurs). Universities in the West will need to think more like High Point to regain relevance.
New World Order?
    Take the passion for free enterprise you see demonstrated in the former Soviet Bloc countries, add in the focused attention to education in some of these countries, and you have the potential for a New World Order.
    There are some small signs that the West is waking up—and hopefully this trend will continue. But right now, the advantage goes to a lot of the smaller, developing countries. Outsourcing will continue to expand, but instead of using this approach to take advantage of a cheaper work force, companies will be outsourcing to tap into a better-educated and more motivated labor pool.
So Where Does All This Take Us Right Now?
    Disruptive technology is eliminating millions of jobs and requiring drastic changes to others. Cloning, along with other advances in medical technology and longevity, will shake things up even more. The irresponsible government financial policies we discussed in the last section are threatening the world economy.
    Power is shifting from the West to developing and even third-world countries. The education system is not preparing you or your kids for how to succeed in the new economy. So just how can people and companies compete and remain relevant in the new world order?
The New Religion of Ideas
    All true prosperity springs from the power of ideas. (If you are interested in the metaphysical process behind this, read Prosperity by Charles Fillmore.) Because the education system has lost the plot, people’s critical thinking ability is shrinking and ideas are diminishing.
    The most valuable, cherished, and sought-after currency in the new economy will be ideas .
    Savvy employees will create their own critical thinking curriculum that incorporates a mélange of problem solving, lateral thinking, logic, and creativity. People who do this will become idea generators and declare themselves free agents. Just like superstar athletes, they’ll be able to entertain a variety of offers and choose the most lucrative long-term deal.
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