Boardman & Sauser (2008) identified “perspectives” as the fourth essence of systems engineering (SE). This is to say that individuals have different points of view in finding meaning in the thread of meaninglessness or finding meaning in the confusion of details. In most cases, perspectives could vary at extreme opposites such as Your east, my west; your cure, my poison; your choice, my constraint etc.
The systems engineer considers this paradox as insight into future worlds.
This raises the question of adaptability in systems engineering for increased value. The article on “School is a prison -and damaging our kids” by Peter Gray, explained that many successful entrepreneurs and innovators, such as Albert Einstein, said they hated school and learned despite it, not because of it. It follows that there was room for adaptability to pursue their desire to know and achieve stability. However, the promise of stability by systems without provision for adaptability could lead to instability and crisis.
In the Boom Burst Boom film, the United States president was vociferous in 2008 about the growth of the economy, but shortly the recession hit, and crisis set in. Financial stability also causes people to be over-confident, especially when systems invest in the financial economy rather than the real economy.
The economy is a critical system which has been politically engineered and misguided by layering debt on debt (borrowing from one financial institution to pay another financial institution) and the forcing loans on people who may never pay them, and eventually get foreclosed. When people borrow cash to buy shares, in the name of investment, they do this in speculation that stocks go up so they can make profit. Systemically, this is not an investment, rather a speculation which could fail due to unforeseen circumstances such as the recession.
According to Zusman (2005), one of the major challenges facing higher education of the 21st century is funding. The author further explained that the level of funding from the state for higher education increases when the state revenues are good. On the other hand, funding of higher education drops during the recession. Apart from the recession, inflation and growth in enrollment could also impact on the available funding. These uncertainties could lead to privatization of public schools in order to raise revenues. The privatization process may be partly or fully implemented across the sub-systems in the educational institution. Zusman (2005) pointed out that in some institutions, “high-demand, high-return professional programs like law or business, become fully or nearly fully funded by clients (students), business, or other private sources.” (p. 2).
Another way to support the higher education is to design a system in each institution which could serve as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in support of the funding needs of the larger system.
Reference
Boardman, J., & Sauser, B. (2008). Systems thinking: Coping with 21st century problems. CRC Press.
Gray P (n.d) School is a prison and damaging our kids. Retrieved from http://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/school_is_a_prison_and_damaging_our_kids/
Jones T. (2015) Boom Burst Boom. Retrieved from https://www.netflix.com/title/80097490
Zusman, A. (2005). Challenges facing higher education in the twenty-first century. American higher education in the twenty-first century: Social, political, and economic challenges, 2, 115-160.