Good Economies Lower College Enrollment- Something More?

Improving economies often bring with it a lack of interest in higher education while a slowing economies often push people to return to school. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center enrollments in 4 year for-profit institutions declined 13.7%, 2 year public institutions 2.4% and 4 year non-profit .03%. Enrollments for 4 year public rose 2.3%.

Total decline for all higher education institutions was approximately 2.3%

When the economy improves people don't feel as though their jobs are under threat and naturally they don't rush to turn that bachelor's degree into an MBA. Alternatively, when the economy turns sour people become more insecure in their employment and feel they must compete.

This is the problem with the higher education market. People get secure and are not motivated and when times get tough they want to adapt and brush up on their skills. Education is seen as very practical in the sense that a new degree leads to higher pay and performance. A one to one relationship occurs in people's minds.

There maybe something else going on as well. People are seeking alternative forms of education. Certificates, MOOCs, seminars, and personal study may be popular options to going back. Students may be seeking alternative forms of education and could be turned off by the cost propositions. Millennials seem to avoid high debt and traditional ways of doing things.

Critical Thinking as an Aspect of Psychological and Logical Forces

Critical thinking can have a huge impact on our lives influences what we believe and how we act on those beliefs. In a world where things are complex and people are flooded with lots of information critical thinking become a critical skill in developing greater knowledge. To understand how our thoughts are influenced we should be able to discern our emotional response from our logical response.

Everyone is subject to emotional and logical arguments. The personality of the individual which determine whether they are more influenced by one or the other. Where some are more reactive to emotional stimuli another might be more reactive to logical points. Having a solid balance between both can be helpful for making the best decisions.

Consider a friend who calls you a name. You react emotionally and call them 20 names in response. Naturally your friendship breaks down and you no longer enjoy each others company. Your friend was wrong but your reaction to it created additional problems. Now you resent each other and are unlikely to mend the break.

Your emotional reactions kicked in and you responded without thinking logically about what will happen. Instead of ensuring your friend squarely was responsible for their behavior you engaged in an emotional display which also make you responsible. If the ability to be logical was present you would have been able to take charge of the situation and had a better outcome.

Now lets assume your emotional and logical thinking skills are in tune with each other. Your friend says a nasty comment. You are naturally upset because they are projecting their issues onto you. Instead of calling them names you logically know it isn't your problem and you question the person while showing an appropriate enough emotion to let them know you are serious.

Two examples:

Psychological and Logical Forces in Alignment: "It seems like you are having a bad day but that doesn't give you the right to call me names. When your in a better mood and can apologize give me a call".

Psychological and Logical Forces not in Alignment: "Who do you think you are? Your nothing, rude, a jerk, and not worthy to be my friend! I don't want to see your ugly face again!"

Understanding the psychological and logical forces will help you respond and make better decisions in about every aspect of your life. You will be able to discern between strong and weak arguments while ensuring that you are better protected from manipulation.

Whether you are at work or at home your ability to think logically and critical is important for enhancing your life. Furthermore, the ability to use emotion appropriately to respond to stimuli and events in your environment will ensure you don't become your own worst enemy. The next time someone tries to "pull the wool over your eyes" make sure you use all of your thinking skills to understand the arguments.

Ethical and Human Development through Utilitarianism-Ensuring Integrity

Utilitariaism argues that ethics is based upon its utility to maximum good. Discussed in by John Stuart Mill in significant detail he explains that most human beings are focused on relatively simple animalistic type beliefs and therefore have little value in their hedonistic behaviors. As people develop they are capable of engaging in more complex morality and fostering greater good.

It isn't necessarily a bad thing to gain short-term pleasures from life. This is a little bit of a spice. Yet the utility of such actions should not necessarily do any harm to others. Simple gain doesn't mean it should take from someone else. Enjoying a sweet piece of pumpkin pie should not come from theft of that pie that takes from someone else.

Some people think beyond their biological urges and more into the greater good of society. We find examples of heroes and martyrs in history that help us redefine ethical and moral behavior. They have developed to a point where they take action and sacrifice for a greater cause to ensure that the maximum amount of people benefit.

That requires a level of human development beyond rudimentary understandings focused on self-gratification. It requires thinking beyond our own needs and this is based in more abstract knowledge and reflective thought processes. This is something that is closely associated with developmental capacity, environment, and intelligence.

Sometimes our developmental level and our responsibilities are on two different levels. Let us assume you are an authority figure like a police officer, judge, or public official and have a larger responsibility to society. Yet your decisions are based in hedonistic pleasures related to arrests levels, feelings of power that groom self-perceptions or making outlandish statements to gain re-election.

One would have to question the potential damage such individuals cause if their development isn't at a level that ensures they can truly fulfill the needs of their position with integrity. If their activities are more focused on their own pleasures and advantages than the needs of the people they have authority over then, such individuals should be stripped of their power.

The best in society are the ones who can think about their own needs but put them in relation to the benefits to society. Good police officers, judges and politicians are capable of thinking about the long-term transactional trust that society is based on and ensure their authority is used appropriately to raise that trust to maintain good order in society.

All systems should encourage good behavior by review and remove mechanisms that help support positive pro-social behaviors that encourage development. Those who act in self-serving or anti-social behaviors must have some mechanisms that will help expose and remove such violators or risk the integrity of the system.

All positions are capable of being compromised by the individuals who reside in them. It doesn't matter what type of positions were are talking about because human beings are inherently flawed. Religious, government, social, business, and any other system is based upon the beliefs of the people who engage in them. When people stop believing the system, it begins to dissipate and break down.

Promotion and advancement of individuals in society to higher level of responsibility should have at least some ethical aspect to ensure maximum benefits to others. Because human beings are sometimes promoted based upon other factor not associated with their capacity to handle responsibility there must always be working cross mechanisms to maintain the integrity of the position.

Why Supporting Ethics is Good for Business

All business is based in social interactions. Social expectations constitute the core of transactions that occur between people. These same transactions also constitute expectations between business. It makes no difference if we are discussing trade and barter between two people or millions of dollars moving through institutions. When ethics are not supported and reinforced through other institutions the fundamentals of economic activity can be damaged.

Few would want to work with another person who is known to cheat, steal, lie and act in an unethical manner. Because money is a socially constructed term of value based upon an amount of effort being cheated out of money by another is a grave violation of social norms and the fundamentals of economic life. Lawsuits, retaliation, lost business and other actions occur when unethical activity takes place.

The problem is that today's society is extremely complex and law and rules can be easily circumvented by people who have more knowledge on these affairs. There are entire industries that help companies get around what is ethical and not ethical making the trust factors of society relatively low. Just look at the polls that show trust between each other, business, and government is declining.

It doesn't have to be. To build strong ethics means that companies should reward employees who act ethically, fire employees who don't, and encourage greater levels of accountability. The Justice System should protect the innocent and ensure violators are held responsible for their behavior. Complexity doesn't need to mean that people do what they want, when they want, without any accountability.

When people have this trust economic activity increases. People believe that if they put effort forward they will get rewarded. They are deterred from acting unethically because they will be punished through poor reputation, lost jobs, lost business, or even legal problems. The long-term end game should never look good for those who do not act ethically yet society doesn't always work that way.

Unfortunately, there are many people in society that have forgotten the value of ethics and think that all things come down to how much they can put in their pockets. Such people sell out their own values as well as the values of society. Still....they often walk unpunished. They have attorneys, right and wrong is lost in legal manipulation, people stay silent, and general confusion of values abounds.

Supporting business means supporting the fundamentals of business that relate to how we value and treat each other. It isn't some wishful thinking...it simply is a fact that people who trust each other are willing to trust working with each other. Trust is built on mutual reciprocity and social expectation that the two people will seek a win win situation. When this doesn't happen we all lose because the precedence set is that ethics is a commodity to be bought and sold depending on its value. 

 

Trending Toward Artificial Intelligence with Facebook's "Big Sur"

Data is changing the world. Facebook, Google, Microsoft and mass media is offering new opportunities to understand human behavior on a grand scale. Big Sur is a new program designed to further current voice and facial recognition technology that could have an impact on the next generation of electronics and intelligence. Self Learning software will be powering many things in the world over the next few decades.

I'm not a big tech guru but I am one for new ways of understanding. Artificial Intelligence is something that theorists have talked about a long time. It is a core part of sci fi movies ever since the self-learning machine. The development of systems that can collect and learn from masses amount of Internet data is interesting and a little scary.

There are two parts that I see to this. The first part is about improving current systems by helping them integrate new information that may vary during processes such as manufacturing, security, and service development. The other side of this is more related to the possibilities of collecting and analyzing large amounts of societal data.

Such systems are becoming more likely as hardware adopts to process more data and more people get connected to the Internet. Facebook has been used for research for a long time but we are now on our way to analyzing massive amounts of user data. It be so much information that one could poll a society just by the way they are talking about issues and the words they are using.

Perhaps such systems will someday let us know how and why revolutions start, how wars are carried out, how social opinions are formed and how people are moving around the world and what they are saying about it. That is both the beneficial side and the scary side of mass programs that can understand, learn and calculate information on a grand scale.

The possibilities are endless and progress will move on whether or not we are ready for it.

Optimism Helps Busy Professionals Beat Heart Attacks

How we think determines many things in our lives. Most of us might think about our positive or negative perspectives on life and how it filters throughout our general viewpoint. According to new research  from Harvard Medical School optimism is linked to an 8% decrease of repeat hospitalizations for serious heart problems. 

Optimism was linked to an 8 percent lower risk of repeat hospitalizations in the six months after one of these serious events, known as acute coronary syndromes (ACS). Participants engaged in 2.5 miles of steps throughout the day but those who were more positive ended up doing better than those who didn't.

This doesn't stand as a surprise considering that optimism reduces stress and stress is a major contributor to long-term health problems. The hearts problems don't generally rise over night and takes years of bad eating, no exercise, stress, and hypertension to create problems.

When you have a positive outlook on life you reduce that stress which creates less pressure on the brain and the body. You can't but help to let silly things go and focus on what is most important to you. Life is short living your life in a way that keeps long-term stress down will raise your optimism and improve upon just about every other aspect of life.

Raising Subjective Customer Value Perceptions Through Reducing Core Confusion

Customer perceptions maybe subjective but do have tangible value in their minds. Customer perceived value  (CPV) is the difference between a customers benefits and costs associated with purchasing a product/service. Raising CPV isn't impossible if the company understands its core demographic and caters its products and services to them.

When the company's products and services are aligned with their core customer base they are better capable of raising per visit purchase amounts as well as retain these customer over a lifetime improving long-term profitability. Unfortunately, many businesses suffer from what I call "core confusion". This occurs when they are not sure who they are as a business and who their customer is.

A company might have multiple products that appeal to different segments. They are trying to be everything for everyone. Their confusion leads to confusion in marketing which in turn draws in lots of customers that have different perspectives the company is not able to meet, products/services that don't fit well, and lots of wasted resources trying to earn a small dime from each customer when they could be earning bigger dollars.

Raising customer perception requires knowing what you are as a company and the type of customer you want to attract. Marketing should be focused on that core customer and services should cater to that core customer as much as possible. If a company does this well they will find their profits rising and their costs going down; shareholders are happy.

When core confusion is low the right customer is being attracted which costs less in overall marketing as the company is high skilled and focused in their campaigns. Less money is spent attracting customers as well as less money actually retaining them over a longer period of time. Internal operations improve as activities become aligned to their core group and stakeholder satisfaction rises with a consistent product, performance and message.