Paul Krugman offered up a column this morning in the NYTimes regarding the slow collapse of American education. Part of it is due of course to the transition of traditional education to more or less trade school education with a heavy emphasis on intense learing and mastering of vertical skill sets - programming, business niches, etc. rather than the broader liberal arts we got when in those ancient times, we went to University.More troubling is his observation that the less fortunate among us are saddled with woes from this prolonged economic downturn and the university experience, even the community college possibility are foresaken because people can't afford it and these institutions are cutting back.
My point with the clock is that time slips by. The chances for attendance at a later date just doesn't happen as it is well known that when students leave the lockstep of high school to college, they don't come back later in life to any great degree unless it is job specific learning.
That is going to cause a gap if prolonged. Where there has been a steady stream of graduates diverse enough to fuel the need, there is going to be fewer to choose from and a high school education, while once robust, really isn't so hot anymore and these folks are often consigned to working up the hard way if at all.
You may not like what we do in education in this country and there is plenty of oafishness in the system, the fact is that our system is the envy of the world and we probably ought to think about it more.