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First, for full disclosure I spent my first career in higher education, on the admissions staff and then the faculty of one university, and subsequently teaching for two other universities before I left the education world after fifteen years, for consulting and my work as a full time futurist. I very much valued higher education then, and still do. In fact, I argue to many audiences that one of the central tasks of our time is to figure out how to enable literally millions more people to access advanced learning. I think that in just about any conceivable future more people will benefit more by learning more. As Craig Venter said recently, the future of human society depends perhaps 100% on science, and thus on an learned population.

But at the celebration parties of college graduates, and in the living rooms of high school grads there lingers this gnawing uncertainty – is the payoff worth the investment? For the new university graduate there is the relatively bleak employment picture they face. For the high school grad going to college there is the possibility they will take on mountains of debt, for an uncertain payoff. There are two answers to these dilemas, a short and positive one, and longer and more complex one.

The short answer is that during the recent economic crisis a college degree meant a much better chance of being employed than did a high school diploma. And the pay premium one receives for a college degree is still substantial when compared to high school only. So it is relatively easy to argue that the great advantages to a college education still exist. That is the short and positive story.

The longer and complex story has two related parts. Because of the very high cost of higher education and the fact that state support for students has declined precipitously everywhere, each new class of college students faces the likelihood of taking on larger amounts of debt, in many cases debt that is so large as to be crippling later in life. This is a system that cannot be sustained, and should not be. I tell all young people that if getting the degree means tens of thousands of debt, don’t do it. Find another way.

Which brings me, finally, to the biggest issue of all which is this. Higher education, one of the oldest institutions around, faces an existential crisis, in my opinion. That is, each institution faces the question of why they exist. In March of this year I had the opportunity to address the Society for College and University Planning. The slide deck is below, available for download at Slideshare.

- credentialing
- furthering knowledge
- sustaining the society’s meritocracy
- arguing for the good life
- providing a physical place for learning
- self-perpetuation

Credentialing is simultaneously being more heavily emphasized by higher education as a form of self-preservation, while at the same time being significantly undermined by the ability of anyone to access real time knowledge on the net. Historically universities were the repository of knowledge – literally where the knowledge was – and you could not access it unless you went there. That world is just about gone. In this century the American GI Bill opened higher education to masses of people. States, for a time, made higher education nearly free in many locales. This contributed to the growth of a true meritocracy where your ability to get ahead depended less on your background than your performance. Recently states have pulled financial resources from higher education, and the well documented growing income disparity threatens to return higher education to its place prior to the 20th century, when it was reserved for the wealthy and served primarily to sustain a fixed class system. As for arguing for the good life, colleges have in recent decades become significantly more focused on their utilitarian purpose – training people for jobs – and less on the concept of the liberally educated person, once the hallmark of modern society. This shift is interrelated with the need for self-perpetuation, as it is believed that this is what the market demands. In addition, there has arisen in the country a surprisingly strong anti-science movement. While suspicion of the “pointy-headed intellectual” enjoys a long history in the U.S., the fact that an entire political party has become quite heavily associated with the rejection of nearly all science is troubling (see Craig Venter, above).

All of this is to say, in ways that cannot be fully summarized in a few paragraphs, that higher education faces both the need, and the urgent opportunity, to reinvent itself. Among the questions I urged the members of SCUP to examine were…

1. What does America (and global society) need from us? What is the purpose of higher education in this part of the 21st Century?
2. What have we been good at in the past? What are we doing that is of no use, what should we let go of?
3. What are the basic values we wish to promote, and how do we best do that?
4. Whom do we serve – students, corporate funders and employers, government, our own careers?

In the end, I believe that higher education is incredibly vital to the future, and that change must come in how higher education serves the future.

The post The future of higher education appeared first on Futurist.com: Futurist Speaker Glen Hiemstra.

In coming weeks we at Futurist.com will be launching a successor program to the Future Talks series, called Future Conversations. I will be doing the interviews this time, focusing on interesting people and what they have to say about the future. Stay tuned for announcements about how you will be able to access this video series.

Glen is interviewed by Roger Simon for Future Talks

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Planning for a child’s financial future used to be considered a luxury, with only the wealthiest families able to provide for their life and education through trust funds or estates.  Today, tools for safeguarding the financial security of a child are available to everyone, and parents will want to take advantage of these many tools and schemes throughout their child’s life, often starting from birth.

There are several reasons why it is wise to plan for a child’s financial future.  Many parents simply want to save for their child’s educational future, putting aside money from an early age for a college education.  Providing for the child in the event of parents becoming ill or dying is also a consideration and an important reason to make financial plans for their protection.  Other parents may wish to leave property or other wealth to their child – a financial legacy with meaning.

Whatever direction a family chooses to go will be guided by their own personal financial goals and situation.  The one constant investing principle throughout is that regardless of what financial plan is chosen, it is vital to start saving for the child’s future as early as possible.

Ways to secure a child’s financial future

The first step for anyone looking to provide for their child is to make sure that their will is up-to-date.  A well-written will may provide for not only the financial protection and future of a child, but also for their physical well being in the event of the death of the parent(s).  For a young child, establishing a trust will see to it that assets are handled appropriately while at the same time protecting the interests of the child.

Life insurance should also be a consideration.  A life insurance policy is a valuable way to provide for loved ones after death, and also to provide a source for emergency funding during life.  A life insurance policy can be maintained by the parents for a relatively small monthly investment.

There are many different ways to save for college, but by far one of the most popular and successful is the 529 college savings plan.  Named for the IRS Code that authorizes its existence, the 529 is flexible and offers parents numerous tax advantages and the ability to retain control of their assets.

Other options for saving for a child include savings accounts and custodial brokerage accounts. Savings accounts, such as the Uniform Transfer to Minors Account (UTMA) or the Uniform Gift to Minors Account (UGMA), may be opened and managed through online banking; the child will get control of the Discover online banking account when they reach legal age.

For broader savings options many parents consider custodial brokerage accounts.  Easy to open, flexible and inexpensive, these accounts are taxed under a lower child’s rate and are filed under the child’s social security number rather than that of the parent(s). Like the savings accounts, the child will gain access to the money at legal age.

*About the Author: Aimee Claire is an enthusiastic, well-educated freelance writer with big ideas for the future. She is fascinated by the possibilities of modern technology, and what it could do for businesses in the future.

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I had an opportunity to do a short email interview with co-editor Neal Gorenflo.

GH: What is going on with the job market for Gen Y?

NG: Young adults are faced with two huge problems. Unemployment rates that are sometimes double and more national averages. And unprecedented student loan debt, especially in the United States.

Malcolm Harris’ article in Share or Die, “Bad Education: The Student Debt Complex” covers this in gruesome detail.The average college senior in 2009 graduated with $24,000 student loan debt. And they are graduating into the worst job market for their age group in a generation. The result is that the most indebted generation in history is without the dependable jobs it needs to escape debt.

Young adults have no choice but to explore new options and even redefine what the American Dream means. Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar, said this recently at the Mesh 2013 conference, “My dad had one job his whole life, I’ll have seven, and my kids will have seven jobs at the same time.”

This is not all bad. The lack of jobs opens space for Gen Y to create work with meaning. And also have multiple streams of income, which can offer more financial stability.

GH: How do we adapt to disappearing jobs and stagnating wages?

NG: By lowering our spending, doing more for ourselves, and creating our own work. In the past, this has often been seen as sacrificing. But the peer to peer ethos that’s emerging valorizes this approach. It’s not sacrificing. It’s cool and even heroic, especially if you empower others with a valuable platform like Etsy, Airbnb, or Techshop that supports people on this path.

GH: What are your thoughts on working from home and the “stint” job lifestyle?

NG: More and more people have the flexibility to work from home, but they are also experiencing its limitations. This along with the freelancing lifestyle have fueled the growth of the coworking movement. In coworking, freelancers, startups, and remote corporate employees share office space in an open plan format. There’s also a conscious attempt to foster community and collaboration. Often coworking space are themed like the one where I work, Hub SoMa, in San Francisco. There’s evidence that this raises productivity and the quality of work life. Some people long for a sense of belonging at work even if the steady corporate job is a thing of the past.

GH: What are some easy ways for Gen Yers to build a meaningful work-life balance?

NG: One way is to have work you love with people you love and live near work. The walls between work and play seem to be collapsing and this is not all bad if you love your work and coworkers. And if you don’t have a commute, that’s more time and less stress in your daily life. Young adults are flocking to cities where they can escape commuting, find or create work more easily, and become part of a real community.

Still, I believe people need downtime. But I think Gen Yers maybe doing this differently than the typical two-week American vacation. They are increasingly taking their work on the road as freelancers, and mixing work and play as they experience new places and cultures. Or they are taking long stretches of time off for personal growth.

You can keep with news on the book or buy the book now.

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Great! Everyone thinks this game is an awesome idea (because it is). Now comes the part where the idea becomes a reality. First comes funding. They’re off to a great start! According to their Indiegogo page, they’ve already raised over $31,300 for the game that’s being called, “An Adventure to Save the World.”

Cyberhero League is the first part of “Project Milky Way,” an epic transmedia adventure. The aim of this first game is to establish an online headquarters that will serve as a gathering place and training ground for cyberheroes. The game is to protect and serve the world online by completing missions and gathering enough points for non-profit partners to donate real aid to real world problems. One of my favorite things about this game is that you get to extend your game play into the real world by using GPS-enabled smartphones to find museums, parks, and World Heritage sites to visit. Once you make the trip and explore the location, you unlock in-game mysteries and get more points.  Gamers also get to build a hideout, complete dangerous missions, solve riddles, and complete other tasks, all while continually donating aid to nonprofit partners.

“In the process of playing, gamer’s will be providing people with water, food, medicine, shelter; they’ll be saving acres of rainforest, protecting endangered species, preserving World Heritage Sites, even defending the night sky!” It’s an exciting time we live in when these kinds of ideas are possible. We can make a game our children can play to learn, develop relationships, and contribute to something they are passionate about through philanthropic organizations. They truly can be superheroes. We all can!

If you like gaming and changing the world, this is the perfect game for you. But it needs to get funded first! There are 7 days left in this Indiegogo campaign, so please go to the Cyberhero League fundraiser page, learn more about the project, and contribute what you can. Then show all of your friends and ask them all to donate what they can.  This game opens up endless possibilities for everyone, so let’s make it happen!

The post Be a Superhero…For Real appeared first on Futurist.com: Futurist Speaker Glen Hiemstra.

I personally recall two other times, after the recessions of the early 1980′s and the early 1990′s when the conventional wisdom was that we had entered a new era of jobless growth. Each of those times the conventional wisdom was wrong, and new inventions, new economic opportunities and an expanding global economy eventually produced huge numbers of new, good jobs. Still, might this be the time that the prediction of a jobless future comes true?

I do not think so. I believe that history is more likely to repeat itself and produce unprecedented levels of employment in the coming two decades. But I use the term employment carefully, because I do think that the nature of work is changing, a lot. Define a job as going to work for someone else, doing work you are largely instructed to do, for a given time each day and each week, in a position that is going to last for many years, in exchange for which you receive “security” in the form of pay and health care and retirement benefits. That world is indeed disappearing. What is different looking ahead is that employment will be more individualized, more stint-based, more oriented toward entrepreneurship and solopreneurs, and in most cases require an up-skilling of more of the workforce.

This requires a re-thinking of many things. Jay Ackroyd points out that the required re-thinking is broad in scope:

If we’re entering a world of job-shifting entrepreneurship, with high-risk/high-reward opportunities for the talented and diligent,* then we need a government that provides a foundation for that world. That means not just a really solid set of social insurance programs independent of people’s jobs, like health care and pensions, but also a stronger basic infrastructure.

Pull optical fiber to every post office and set up public wireless. Give everyone a bank account at the Fed. Restore access to inexpensive higher education. Stop the copyright and patent madness. The best public policy in Tommy’s [Thomas Friedman] world would eliminate the parasitic monopolists choking off innovation and opportunity.

We are not there yet, but should go there. Interestingly one of the institutions focusing on jobs is the Federal Reserve Bank of the U.S. They have been charged with a mission by their directors to help the nation focus on how to develop the workforce of the future. To that end one the things they have been doing is to sponsor and host conferences on future workforce training. I’ve had the opportunity to provide keynote speeches to two of them, last Fall in Kansas City, and in January of 2013 in Atlanta. The latter was a special gathering of the Presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. That program was not recorded, but the earlier event in Kansas City was video recorded, and highlight videos were produced. You can see several of them here.

My keynote speech that kicked off that conference was excerpted in the video below. Fast forward to the 7:50 mark if you want to see what I had to say about the digital native generation and the knowledge value economy and what they mean for the future of work.

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I was pleased this spring to join 5 other leading futurists as resident advisers on the future for Fast Company and their online endeavor FastCo Exist. We are called The Futurist Forum and our task is to imagine the future. The image above is a page from the May 2013 edition of Fast Company Magazine introducing the 6 experts to the magazine’s readers.

We each will be contributing articles periodically and participating in webcasts and online conversations. You can find my initial piece here, on the future of transportation. I highlight the prospects for solar roadways and a magnetic induction system for buses from the Wave company.

Check out the other’s in this forum, as they have very interesting things to say.

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Geoffrey Canada is charismatic and totally genuine. I am amazed by his ability to make me laugh while I reflect on the magnitude of unacceptable issues in the education system.  His refreshing common sense attitude towards quality education for everyone is both compelling and plainly justified. In this business there is endless red tape wrapped around every attempt at achieving any real change–and we need to do better business. “If you can’t teach, you should get another job,” Canada states obviously. That seems like a simple enough equation for most businesses, but for some reason even modest reforms are fought tooth and nail in education.

We’re making progress…slowly. The Academic Acceleration bill passed through the House and Senate last week. The bill automatically enrolls every student who qualifies into more rigorous advanced classes. The bill would help prepare children for college and has already had one example of successful implementation. In the Federal Way, the number of 11th and 12th grade students of color taking at least one advanced class increased by 76% in just one year with Academic Acceleration. That’s fantastic progress, and organizations like Stand for Children are truly making a difference in education.

Still, there’s much more to be done. And it should be everybody’s concern, not just a select number of passionate groups. Washington passed charter schools last year, but it was a close race. Opposition to charter schools does have its validity. There have been failed charter schools that should be shut down, but that’s no reason to give up altogether. Failure fosters innovation. We should be trying new methods instead of reinforcing what doesn’t work. At the end of Canada’s speech, he leaves us with two challenges: 1) Think outside the box, and 2) Help young people gain a new sense of optimism. “There’s no one coming to save your children,” says Canada, reminding us that we are the ones that need to make sure schools are working. Schools need to strive to improve year after year, and we need to be the ones enforcing that.

If we take action and stand up and demand a high quality education for all, and if we especially make sure that children are growing up educated, we will surely see a positively drastic change in the world. Less crime, healthier citizens, and a bigger pool of innovative ideas to choose from. Those are the things I’m looking forward to most as more and more of our young people grow up educated. Education affects everyone, so it makes sense to donate some of your time and effort to making sure the effects are positive. We can do it; we just need to get creative. To learn more about how Stand for Children Washington gets creative, check out how you can get involved.

The post Changing the Odds: Fight for more than just modest education reforms appeared first on Futurist.com: Futurist Speaker Glen Hiemstra.

Screenshot: The Veronica Mars Movie Kickstarter page

I’m amazed to see the impressive things being funded on Kickstarter lately. Veronica Mars fans everywhere broke Kickstarter records by garnering support from 91,585 backers to revive the cancelled-too-early-TV-show for a Veronica Mars Movie. With over 63,000 backers, OUYA raised over $8.5M to create a TV game console, powered by Android and open for all app developer contributions. The system is inexpensive, crowdfunded and open-sourced, which to me confirms the exciting declaration on OUYA’s Kickstarter page: “The possibilities are limitless.”

The idea of crowdsourcing as an endless source of possibility swept over me again when I found this Kickstarter for microprocessors the size and cost of a pack of gum. This exciting project was funded by 709 eager backers for more than $23,000 over the initial goal. A campaign for microprocessors doesn’t seem too exciting until you dig into the details:

• This ultra-low cost development platform for micro-robotics can be easily assembled with through-hole components and a soldering iron
• The purpose of this Kickstarter is to make a platform for future projects in the Robotics club, which will be documented and made open source for everyone to share

What if everyone had easy and inexpensive access to making their own microprocessors? What will we be able to achieve in minutes, without even leaving the house? What if we get to vote for the media we want to consume and fund the startups we want to see created? In this era of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, we’re customizing more and more of our lives and it’s getting easier and easier to do. I’m excited to see projects like these succeed because they remind me that it’s not only possible for us to create our own customized futures for ourselves, but it’s seems likely that one day it will be probable.

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