Invest in higher education to restore good jobs
College → Jobs → People → Community
A Workers’ University provides workforce training to improve local standards and create good jobs. Good jobs restore the foundational professions to create a full-service economy. Key sectors like architecture, agriculture, medicine, and education are context-dependent and therefore require skills. Mass production destroys skills, which causes quality to decline unless we have standards. Young professionals want to learn skills that have been lost to offshoring and automation, so they move back to their hometown. The influx of talent reverses antisocial trends.
Certification Programs
Standards prevent special interests from controlling the market. Standards allow local businesses to compete once corporations can no longer destroy the environment and the community. Standards price in negative externalities to the cost of mass production. Once standards are in place, over-specialization becomes unprofitable.
The protection afforded by standards only works if there are professionals who can meet those standards. Otherwise, we have to accept what exists. Therefore, in addition to higher standards, we also offer workforce training to develop necessary skills.
Workforce training is certified by the municipality to confirm that it meets standards. Certification offers expedited approval. Non-certified workers can still participate in the economy, but they have to comply with additional requirements.
Architecture
Design Standards: Natural buildings are adapted to the site and fit with the climate and customs.
Workforce Training: Teach vernacular building forms and natural building processes to encourage small developers and self-build housing.
Certification: Fast-track permitting for certified builders
Agriculture
Food Standards: Promote local organic farming.
Workforce Training: Teach regenerative farming, bio-intensive techniques, and ecological sustainability.
Organic Certification: Certification for local famers
Education
Education Standards: Content-rich curriculum, inquiry-based learning, behavior standards, neighborhood schools, appropriately-scaled buildings
Workforce Training: Best-practices in education
Teacher Certification: Fill the teacher shortage
Medicine
Health Standards: Preventative medicine over management plans and chemical interventions
Workforce Training: Small practices with a doctor-patient relationship instead of hospital conglomerates and protocols
Medical Certification: Fill the doctor and nurse shortage
Upgrade Your College
Funding opportunities don’t require participation from the local college. Whether developing a new college, or working with an existing college, the following criteria must be met.
1. The Campus
- Local Amenities: The campus must be located in a central location, within walking distance of amenities. It should be connected by bus routes to additional nodes and transportation hubs.
- Adapted Architecture: The architecture should fit the local climate and culture. Historic buildings are ideal, but new construction is fine as long as it meets the same level of quality as historic buildings.
2. The Curriculum
- Project-Based Learning: Lectures should be tied to projects at different timescales. Big questions, such as “what is a good building?”, are long-term projects that take a lifetime to answer. Short-term projects, such as classroom exercises and homework assignments, motivate students along the way.
- Hands-On Research: Courses should be interdisciplinary and related to real-word projects. Students can do individual research to better understand existing scholarship.
- Content-Rich Curriculum: Courses should have a content-rich curriculum, according to statistically-proven scholarship. Students shouldn’t have to wade through muck to find what they need.
Content consists of:
- Scholarship compiles References
- Canon organizes Scholarship
- Research updates the Canon
- Discourse debates Research
3. The Students
- Attract Talent: A program’s success depends on who it can attract. Young talent is worth more than anything else because it validates everything else. Future leaders decide prestige, which determines future funding and accreditation.
- Selectivity: Students want to be around peers of like ability. The common denominator is intelligence. The best predictor of future success is past success because both require intelligence.
- Self-Respect: An admissions process that requires time-consuming processes defeats the purpose of admissions. It offends the right kind of person, so only the wrong kind of person applies, which means only the wrong kind of people get admitted.
4. The Faculty
- Top-Ranked Experts: Students should learn from experts. Department heads should be experts in their respective fields and well-known in the community. Students can submit course evaluations to validate the consensus.
- Faculty Hierarchy: Leadership is necessary to coordinate the departments. Department heads are responsible for assembling a faculty and budget. Faculty can propose courses each year, subject to public interest and funding.
5. Job Prospects
- Values-Aligned: Low standards destroy good jobs even more than low wages or a bad work environment. Students want to contribute something meaningful to society. BS jobs are low-status because they don’t require skills, which means that anyone can do them.
- Community Partnerships: Business leaders determine which skills are missing in the economy. Mass production doesn’t work for context-dependent jobs because relationships can’t be commodified. A liberal arts education explains value, so students know what is socially and environmentally beneficial.
- Leadership Opportunities: Graduates can do research, teach courses, and advise the town. Students receive professional certification upon graduating.
