blog # 32

Back in the 1950s roughly 5% of people had a Bachelor’s degree.  Now however,  27.2% of the population has a Bachelor’s degree.  In the 1950s  Master’s degrees and PhD’s were virtually unheard of.  Today,  8.9% of people have earned a Master’s degree and 3% of people have earned a PhD.  Those numbers have been creeping up steadily in the last few years.  It’s obvious that the world is being forced into higher education.  If one decided not to go to college, they’re pretty much saying that they are prepared to work 10 times harder to make less money.  Without a college education, one is subject to a lifetime of physical labor and that can cause premature death because it’s so stressful.  Technology has made the younger generations work harder.  Due to recent developments in biology, and technology (like computers, calculators, and the internet) teachers are expecting more from their students than ever before.  For example, when my father was in college, there wasn’t much known about biology, but since then scientists have done more research on bacteria, germs and genes and now, in a Bio 101 class, I was expected to know a lot more about biology than my father ever was. 

            In today’s world, kids are held to the same behavioral expectations as their parents but are held to different educational expectations.   Children are expected to behave the same they’ve been expected to behave since the 1950s, yet are required to have 10 more stress on their lives? How is that possible for kids not to react differently.