College was once reserved for a small minority of people seeking highly advanced education, but now a four-year degree is essential if a person wants to succeed in a career in which they hold some degree of authority or expertise. However, this trend continues to expand, and soon eight or more years of higher education will become the standard. As the amount of knowledge needed in order to contribute to society grows, so does the amount of time spent in school. But will the amount of time spent in school reach an impractical limit, and if so, how will we deal with it? Another effect of the rising amount of information being compiled is the way such advanced ideas are conveyed to students. Professors were once students, but somewhere along the way it seems they forget what it is like to be a student, and some have trouble with effectively communicating their material. It might be that what they are teaching is extremely abstract that leads to the difficulty in communicating the information, but no matter what the cause, the effect is that students are left without an intuitive grasp of the basic concepts necessary to learn more. Also, our current approach to knowledge assessment, the letter grade system, seems to have been based on rudimentary knowledge rather than collegiate level information. This system of assigning letters to determine whether a student has comprehended a subject is not conducive to true understanding, and its place at the collegiate level is hindrance to education. How is it that educators of the near future will deal with these problems in order to teach students of technology and medicine effectively and efficiently?
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A look at the unintended consequences of facebooking.
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Recent developments in scientific research are about to completely revolutionize the approach scientists take to finding the cure for cancer. For decades, most scientists believed that all cells of a malignant tumor were similar and contained equal ability to divide and form new tumors. However, there was always a small percentage that believed only a select few “stem cells” had the capacity to divide and create new cancerous tumors. It wasn’t until about a decade ago that the existence of these cancer stem cells was proven.
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A critical look at the public education system.
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