Skin in the Game

http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/11/12/cavuto-interviews-college-protest-organizer-one-percent-can-afford-cover-free-tuition

I am beginning my comments with this link of a student interview about the million student march. Like so many of us we have watched the bullying at the University of Missouri and saw clearly the utilization of the leverage from athletic program revenues and then see the top two university officials simply tuck their tales and run and hide.  I do not know about you but all of this is, well, typical of America today defined as bullies gaining the high ground.

Listening to this young lady talk about the March is designed to get free tuition for college, all student loan debt paid off and all paid for by the "1% of people hoarding" the money.  

How immature misinformed and incredible such rhetoric is.  I had a great friend many years ago tell me bluntly that until you have skin the the game, you nor anyone else will full embrace nor engage the issue.  But her rhetoric aligns perfectly with the Democratic 'give me because you owe me' mentality that now abounds.  In doing organizational effectiveness consulting for nearly ten years after my retirement from Goodyear, I saw that adage so clearly.  Free anything means free some taking responsibility.

Had I not personally witnessed by thousands of university students how badly student loans were abused, not an intent to repay, total disregard for credit viability into the future, purchase of nicer cars, nicer computer, iPhone, clothes etc, etc, I lost great respect for many students in their intentional misuse of borrowed funds. That was exacerbated by the fact by the fact of knowing so many parents were sacrificing their retirements accounts, etc, to pay for their child and to see the abuse of the sacrificial support from parents and grand parents was and is sickening to me.  Mind you, this does not describe the majority of students but a sizable portion certainly feed it that trough in various tributaries.  

But at the aggregate of my thesis is that unless a person be they a spouse, a child, a student, an employ invests some of their on skin / responsibility into the work involved, they will never fully invest themselves thus fall along the roadway of bystanders. I apply my Pareto analogy of the 80/20 for I believe it is roughly 20% of students that choose not to invest themselves and tend to take advantage of the 80% that invest themselves fully into their education and thus life and thus future and it is that 80% that will lead the future while dragging the 20% along the way as their, the 80%'s taxes they pay from earnings are siphoned into entitlements and safety nets for the 20%ers. Trust me, this is a viable theory that is very real and measurable. 

There are millions of amazing, gifted, hard driving students in our classrooms.  My greatest concern for those students is the very poor quality of teaching they will receive as too many professors are over-focused on research, dissertations (a racket in and of itself), and too many faculty, like the communications professor at Missouri inflaming the terrible unrest now apparently proven to be fueled by lies and troublemakers.  But alas, the Pandora box is now fully opened so we will now witness more and more of this and it will be the 20%ers of tomorrow that will be filling the campus quads and student centers shouting and demanding.

The Missouri reality should have been handled day one by the President firing the football coach, revoking all participant football scholarships and forfeiting the rest of the football season.  What we are witnessing is a new form of bullying and the stick of TV revenues flowing into universities and being spent less on student enhancement to learn but on more computers, buying parts of cities to expand country club type facilities, etc. 

America has turned soft and flabby with this new exhaustive layering of movements, entitlements, softening the rules enforcement, police hating, loss of global power leadership and more than anything, turning solidly away from God. A recent poll I saw this week indicates that 42%  of Americans consider themselves spiritually "nones" meaning they have nor feel no sense of connection nor value in organization religion. 

Satan is winning!