Building a profitable education

Many students fit badly into the current school system. With many feeling as though it's just "a waste of time", resentment is growing in each successive generation of youth towards their education. The educational problems are only one part of this, too; with social resentment growing between the ostracized and the social elite, schools are turning into emotional (and, unfortunately, physical) zones of class warfare. I'll address both problems simultaneously, by proposing a radical departure from the current curriculum.

I'd like to see a school built where the student's grade (and graduation) depends entirely on the profit -- while they get credit for the classes, to graduate they must form a business and succeed. It puts an entirely new spin on "getting a degree", as now they have the added credential of creating a successful business. That's worth far more than their weight in gold, and makes for a useful depth of education in business.

Ideally, the school would be run for-profit (a business role model for doing things in an open, proper manner). By selling a share of stock for a credit in any given term, it could provide people access to a real-life college business education, while giving students the power of a shareholder's influence over a company. The twist, though, is that the student must own the share of stock: students must be shareholders. Introduce profit sharing, and now it's to each student's benefit to succeed. With the proper structure, competition could be allowed to run rampant (pure capitalism); as well, competition could be downplayed, for the benefit of the community (cooperative capitalism).

I feel that such a drastic change in the educational process would be of great benefit to students who feel that the current system is unable to help them achieve their goals. By providing a real-life, internship-like education in the realities of cooperation and competition in business, the students could acquire a set of skills comparable with those taught in secondary business schools – while developing confidence in their social interactions and resume experience for advancing their real-world careers.

Update: Added two paragraphs (first and last), slight modifications to center paragraph.

Comments

[srl]

You're assuming, though, that all learning can be seen in terms of dollars-and-cents profit...