From: carolyn@allen.com (Carolyn Allen)
Newsgroups: misc.education
Subject: Re: Education and global competition info needed
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 10:04:30 EDT
Organization: Allen Marketing Group - Raleigh, NC

Barry Thomas <thomasb@ucs.indiana.edu> writes:

> One of our Board of Trustees memebers is participating in a forum whose
> themes are:
> 
> >. To explore critical issues facing U.S. now and in the future in
> meeting challenges of global competition

I hope you are asking for general input...thus, I'm going to share my 
perspective as a small business employer, parent, and active citizen.

I believe the critical issues facing the US  in meeting challenges of 
global competition are largely internal...local...domestic.  We have 
become a lazy people, full of high expectations and little knowledge of 
the cost someone had to pay to make the riches we've enjoyed available to 
us.  The economic decline is highly charged with individual greed on the 
part of all of our workers...from the street sweeper to the secretary to 
the secretary of state.  We ask for high wages, high benefits, large 
amounts of time-off...and don't want our efforts to be measured, refined 
to meet the demands of the marketplace, or to spend any of our personal 
resources (pay or time) in developing our skills, knowledge or personal 
career advancement.  We are violent when we don't get our way. We have 
little self-discipline in emotional, economic, or physical ways. We can't 
communicate ideas effectively.  We can't plan in ways that make valuable 
events happen effectively....and the list goes on. But all these issues 
seem to center around a personal-responsibility breakdown. Life is 
supposed to be fun...right!!  

> >. To explore possible ways higher education can help the nation in
> becoming and     staying more competitive in the global marketplace
> >. To explore how businesses and government assist higher education
> institutions in preparing us for the global competition.

I think the most effective thing busienss can do to help colleges, etc. 
PARTICIPATE in the battle for global competition is to let you know how 
ineffective your offerings are in the real issue...survival in a touch 
world!  I don't have time to take on undisciplined students as interns... 
I would prefer that students be required to work during college...and 
work at things that makes their own education possible.  That includes 
things like assisting construction and maintenance crews, prepare 
teaching materials, clean toilets, serve food, mann the phones, publish 
information directories, etc. in order to learn how to work together as a 
team to accomplish a purpose that they can understand is important.

Our son attended a state residentical high school in which all students 
were required to perform community service in their own communities, as 
well as have on-campus jobs such as mentioned above. It was effective. I 
also know of one or two coleges that require similar participation in the 
college community...and hear that they have very good results.  

I just find college grads are pretentious, greedy, lazy, and very focused 
on their social life...an expect me to create a high-paying job for them. 
Sorry, that's not how the world of small business works...and small 
business is where the jobs are being created/not lost--as in the large 
corporate world.

Do professors really understand the survival mode this country is 
operating in at this time?  Do they know the long unpaid hours someone 
has to invest to create just one job?  Do they participate in community 
leadership?  I find college faculty to be the epitome of the college grad 
grown older, but not necessarily wiser.
> 
> I don't follow this news group, but hope you might be able to suggest
> other information sources or provide your own thoughts and comments on
> these subjects.  I am also searching for articles.
> 
> I would appreicate  e-mail.  Thanks in advance.
> 
> Barry Thomas
> thomasb@ucs.indiana.edu
> Indiana University
> 
> Opinions expressed our my own and do not represent the University

Newsgroups: misc.education