Will the world become an even more brutal place for those who are good at going to school? The poster boy for that has been Larry Summers who was encouraged to leave his president's job at Harvard. Summers might be leaving the Obama Administration. Post-schooling, we tend to become our own lost generation.
Just as predicted, the "C" students became the bosses of us the "A" students. Our social skills were often marginal so we struggled with isolation. And to recapture past glory, we frequently returned to school for yet another degree which didn't improve things much. We just weren't all that good at life.
That troubled pattern could become even worse as the knowledge economy mutates into the Creative [Richard Florida] or Right Brain [Daniel Pink] one. Craigslist still has ads requiring "degree from top school with high GPA." But employers who are naive enough to want that will probably be soon out of business. The value of schooling might have already reached a point of diminishing returns.





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