The California Dream Act.

The banking industry is likely California Dreaming about the day when more states get their act together. …For those of us who think that the US will see a bubble in the education industry caused by its efforts to distribute human kind’s knowledge communities outside of the affluent elite, they shouldn’t hold their breath.

The Cali Dream Act could seem like an altruistic attempt to empower our desperate relatives converging on US cities, but there are some fiscally desperate economics behind this proverbial triumph over “social evil”, as if such a thing ever existed…LOL

For-profit and Not-for-profit education is big business…consider the $4.9B income of the Apollo Group, owner of University of Phoenix or the pride of the west coast’s $16.5B endowment at Stanford University. All of these are affected by the arbitrage (my favorite word smile ) in an industry… losing applicants with the confidence that a degree or certificate is honestly their best investment. 

One thing is for sure, the US is the largest knowledge community on the planet currently, and one thing it can still sell the world’s consumers on, is that they’ll want to tap into the experience in their quest to secure the ideal 20th century standard of  success. To be redundant, the 20th century American Dream is still the benchmark for making it in 2011 for the vast majority world around us…even as those of us investing in the future would harshly disagree.  Where better to catch a dream life than in California…or even Michigan, with residents exiting at record paces.

The reality is that undocumented immigrants are a new class of Americans or non-Americans to sell long-term deferred and/or short term deferred loans. Its an ideal way to build collateral on the balance sheet of a lending company ;-). I’m not only expecting for more states to echo California’s legislative desperation/foresight (call it how you like), but I am expecting for the near future to offer American educations with State and possibly Federal assistance (at a taxable premium + interest) to undocumented immigrants of the US… and even foreign nationals with no immediate intent on coming to the US for legal or illegal residency. It’ll be called globalization…

The US education models designed by the non-profit traditional institutions and technologized (new word for me…lol) by the more agile for-profit institutions, will be distributed throughout the world at the rate of technologies acceptance in foreign countries.

And, of course, where there is government support (large pot of $), private speculation (smaller pots of $) will follow its low risks. fueling the distribution of what we know and what we are exploring.

California Dreams Video 1 from IFTF on Vimeo.

INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE ANNOUNCES CALIFORNIA DREAMS:
A CALL FOR ENTRIES ON IMAGINING LIFE IN CALIFORNIA IN 2020

Put yourself in the future and show us what a day in your life looks like. Will California keep growing, start conserving, reinvent itself, or collapse? How are you living in this new world? Anyone can enter,anyone can vote; anyone can change the future of California!

California has always been a frontier—a place of change and innovation, reinventing itself time and again. The question is, can California do it again? Today the state is facing some of its toughest challenges. Launching today, IFTF’s California Dreams is a competition with an urgent challenge to recruit citizen visions of the future of California—ideas for what it will be like to live in the state in the next decade—to start creating a new California dream.

California Dreams calls upon the public look 3–10 years into the future and tell a story about a single day in their own life. Videos, graphical entries, and stories will be accepted until January 15, 2011. Up to five winners will be flown to Palo Alto, California in March to present their ideas and be connected to other innovative thinkers to help bring these ideas to life. The grand prize winner will receive the $3,000 IFTF Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight.

“We want to engage Californians in shaping their lives and communities” said Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of IFTF. “The California Dreams contest will outline the kinds of questions and dilemmas we need to be analyzing, and provoke people to ask deep questions.”

Entries may come from anyone anywhere and can include, but are not limited to, the following: Urban farming, online games replacing school, a fast food tax, smaller, sustainable housing, rise in immigrant entrepreneurs, mass migration out of state. Participants are challenged to use IFTF’s California Dreaming map as inspiration, and picture themselves in the next decade, whether it be a future of growth, constraint, transformation, or collapse.

The grand prize, called the Roy Amara Prize, is named for IFTF’s long-time president Roy Amara (1925–2000) and is part of a larger program of social impact projects at IFTF honoring his legacy, known as The Roy Amara Fund for Participatory Foresight, the Fund uses participatory tools to translate foresight research into concrete actions that address future social challenges.

PANEL OF COMPETITION JUDGES

Gina Bianchini, Entrepreneur in Residence, Andreessen Horowitz

Alexandra Carmichael, Research Affiliate, Institute for the Future, Co-Founder, CureTogether, Director, Quantified Self

Bill Cooper, The Urban Water Research Center, UC Irvine

Poppy Davis, Executive Director, EcoFarm

Jesse Dylan, Founder of FreeForm, Founder of Lybba

Marina Gorbis, Executive Director, Institute for the Future

David Hayes-Bautista, Professor of Medicine and Health Services,UCLA School of Public Health

Jessica Jackley, CEO, ProFounder

Xeni Jardin, Partner, Boing Boing, Executive Producer, Boing Boing Video

Jane McGonigal, Director of Game Research and Development, Institute for the Future

Rachel Pike, Clean Tech Analyst, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Howard Rheingold, Visiting Professor, Stanford / Berkeley, and theInstitute of Creative Technologies

Tiffany Shlain, Founder, The Webby Awards
Co-founder International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences

Larry Smarr
Founding Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Professor, UC San Diego

DETAILS

WHAT: An online competition for visions of the future of California in the next 10 years, along one of four future paths: growth, constraint, transformation, or collapse. Anyone can enter, anyone can vote, anyone can change the future of California.

WHEN: Launch – October 26, 2010
Deadline for entries — January 15, 2011
Winners announced — February 23, 2011
Winners Celebration — 6 – 9 pm March 11, 2011 — open to the public

WHERE: http://californiadreams.org

For more information on the California Dreaming map or to download the pdf, click here.