Twitter handles 80% of my news consumption somewhat like a "conversational RSS feed." I follow reporters and opinionators I respect and read the links they post to stories.
I never truly understood the quadratic formula until I learned about the history of the equation and its discoverer. History of Mathematics should be a fundamental course.
Except that's not how protecting the environment works. You can't undo damage to the environment as easily as you can destroy it. So if in one minute he thinks its ok to do something destructive, in the next minute it will be too late to undo that.
Please keep this in mind.
This applies to other areas of life as well. If you are an undocumented child living in this country. You can't have a normal life if all you know is that Trump might change his mind. You will forever live in fear. That's not fair to anyone.
Even if you don't have a degree in your field, college offers an opportunity to enhance your own critical thinking and problem solving abilities, which are paramount to success in some fields.
Also, one has to consider the shifts in education that seem to be focused more on graduation rates than quality graduates. In such a situation, graduate school becomes the new undergrad, and undergrad becomes the new high school degree. This isn't everywhere, but that seems to be the general trend across many markets: a four year degree is become a minimum qualification.
I have met and interviewed plenty of well educated, degreed individuals that couldn't find their way out of a problem no matter what help you provided them. It doesn't mean these are poorly educated or unintelligent people, just proves that a degree doesn't provided you with critical thinking or problem solving abilities. College only provides you the opportunity to develop these skills, which you can find in other places as well.
Reading Fooled By Randomness / The Black Swan / Anti-fragile would probably put you on a better footing for critical thinking than any college degree. (And probably some other books you could substitute.)
I'm okay with this assessment. College doesn't guarantee these skills, but it certainly provides a great deal of opportunity for the student to gain a significant advantage over non-college grads.
Any psychometric test designed to measure achievement--or explicitly critical thinking--that can be administered pre and post college to an experimental sample. You might have to do factor analysis on the college/setting and/or program studied.
Super idealistic and optimistic, but an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. It's unfortunate that modern economic obsession with "growth" as an eternal endgame is a hard addiction to break.
I think this is why indie magazines are starting to thrive in their niche; even younger readers are appreciating the aesthetic and value of print as a resource AND art form.
At the end of the day attention is the only finite resource. Everything else is infinite. If you have something worthy of my attention, then I might just pay you for it. It has nothing to do with print or infinity. It has everything to do with the value proposition. Mass media has very little value proposition when put against its competitors. Other things might not. Things that you care about that are harder to find. That are easier. That are prettier. That appeal to identity politics like vinyls and other retro things. That make you a hipster or a snob. That differentiate you from the poseurs.
Local team blackouts on streaming services like MLB.tv are the only thing keeping most people (who don't understand proxies and VPNs) from cutting live TV.
