How to Fix Graphic Design and Career Education

Read about it here and here and here. Or if that doesn't work for you, read this.

It would be way cool if you could get a Print version so you wouldn't have to waste all the time clicking. But keep in mind, the Internet = Search + Telephone + TV + A big filing cabinet + the best way to buy stuff in the history of the world. It's a better, faster, cheaper way to do those things.

Not so good for compare and contrast. In any case, here's how I see it.

In the Printing Industry the players are, top of mind, Xerox, Kodak, Oce, Canon, Fuji Xerox. For commercial printers, it's everyone who needs a reliable source of talent to figure out what to do next. I like to call that installation a Publishing Center. For newspapers, it's all the serious players. top of mind, NY Times, Washington Post, McClatchey, Reuters, maybe even the AP if they can stop thinking the sky is falling. For design studios and ad agencies, it's pretty much what Seth said at the fourth link in the first line.

Consider:
Education is the most sustainable profitable business in America. 50% of the kids in K-12 fail. The drop out rate in Community Colleges is huge. There are no serious measures of accountability. It's a protected market given that the certification process is controlled by legacy players. Every parent in the country will put themselves in deep debt to pay for it.

You can try it out for yourself with a little search an replace. Xerox University. Kodak University. Fuji Xerox University. Or NYTimes (fill in the blank) graduate program in journalism. Or the XYZ Printing Company Publishing Center and CTE Program.

Tuition? free for employees. $5,000 a year for high school kids (paid by the government), $10,000 a year for a BA.

Infrastructure? That was hard awhile ago. Traditional Universities still have heaps of money going into staff. Mostly what they do is figure out work arounds to work with proprietary systems. The focus is usually security as opposed to learning. So, use the Cloud or Google Ap or PbWiki or ning or...you get the picture.

Staff? Given the number of young great teachers and retiring baby boomers and the pittance they get paid at most Universities, it should be easy to pull together the staff. Use an "freelance with security model. Supply good health care and don't make them go to stupid meetings.

Sound like a low hanging fruit?

Google? Economic stimulus package? Gates Foundation? Knight Foundation? maybe even one of the better schools could incubate this. Harvard? Brown? Yale? Columbia? Stanford?
or maybe an industry association. PIA? AAAA? . . . or maybe even the AP, as soon as they figure out that contrary to the conventional wisdom, the sky is NOT falling.

If anyone wants to know how to do it in their situation, just leave a comment. Anon is fine and I'll give you the step by step. It would help to identify whether you are a big business, a commercial printer, a newspaper or a government or a politician or running for office . . . or the AP. Dear AP, you can call it a news service or something like that if you're embarrassed.

My bet is that it will start in India. Then maybe Australia. Or in the UK or Sweden. Or out in the heartland of the USA. Everyone in NYC is too busy in a meeting or twittering.