The late Bert Lance once said his most Famous quote “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That is how people have been looking at the education system in America. The only problem is that the education system in the United States is failing. Education today has turned into a way of making money and not about teaching students. Although some say you pay for the education you get, is that really true? As a full-time student who has to work to pay his way through college, I see things a little different. The education system defiantly needs to change. In my opinion, the most promising solution is Experience Learning, as shown in the conversation tab. Many other Countries are doing something along the same lines and it they are being extremely successful. The question I keep asking myself is, what is the best way to implement experiential learning to benefit the students of our country?

If you ask me, the best thing would be if every high school student was assigned a career counselor. The whole purpose of this student advisor would be to guide students in find careers they are interested in. Anything from helping them find internships to helping them find professionals in that field to shadow could help the situation in a great way. By the time students then got to universities, they would have an idea of what the field they say to be interested in is all about. This kind of experience before college allows students more time to think about something else if the so desired field turns out to be not what they were expecting. By the time they enrolled in college, they would already have internships or part-time jobs in the career area of their choice under their belts. Having the option of going to school part-time while simultaneously working in the desired field, seems to me like the perfect arrangement. Students would be able to learn their subject matter as they become more well-rounded and apply the learned material to the workforce. This would of course increase the level of experience required to get jobs in a given field.

Implementing these ideas would be a hybridization of experience learning from the United States and other countries such as Germany. Graduate students in the United States are overall known to be more well-rounded while those from Germany are known to be more skilled in the field of their choice. With this new hybrid system, we would get well-rounded members of society who come out of college with prior labor force experience.

In the long run, this will create new jobs because high schools would be in need of more qualified staff to fulfill the counselor positions, which would lower the unemployment rate in America. Since students will have more work experience, they will be more qualified for better jobs, which will also affect the unemployment rate in a positive way. Countries like Germany, who are more focused on job training then helping develop well-rounded students, have lower Unemployment rates because students are properly trained by professionals in hands work environments (ATTN:).

Of course, all these changes would not be able to happen overnight. To start, there would have to be studies and research done on how it would work properly. Then, roughly 20 years after the studies are done, it could start being implemented all over the United States to better the education system so students can find better jobs in the field they decide to go into.