The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing

The title of this paper is to draw attention to the deteriorating and some say despicable conditions in the academic world. The paper utilizes the critical research method which is an emerging research paradigm in educational research. It also attempts to encompass a somewhat light-hearted word-fun approach to make a very serious problem more palatable reading. Its aim is to promote change. The work here focuses on illuminating the legacy conditions in the infancy of public education and following the mutations leading to today’s conditions of companies, organizations and individuals or pigs at the trough who has forsaken learning for earnings and profits. Revealed in the research are such enlightening findings as in the National Center for Education’s 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. The 107-page report. covers education characteristics of the population, enrollment rates, educational attainment, illiteracy, income, elementary and secondary education, statistical trends, enrollment, school attendance, pupil/teacher ratios, student assessment (which discusses test results trends), high school graduates, public elementary and secondary school, revenues, expenditures, higher education, enrollment, institutions and professional staff, degrees conferred, master’s degrees, doctor’s degrees, first-professional degrees, revenues for higher education, expenditures, endowments and physical plants. What the report does not mention not even once in all its 107 pages, 21 sets of figures and 37 tables is the word learning. Also demonstrated is the current level of the very poor results of products of the U.S. educational system by discussing the historical performances of U.S. students on international achievement tests. The research reveals both the intended and unintended consequences of grade inflation, student cheating, professor/teacher good grades for better class review problems and the false sense of learning. The purpose of this research is to (a) to identify trends and factors negatively impacting student learning; (b) inform to help solicit change and mitigate future risk factors and (c) challenge the reader to become part of the solution. These findings and the continuation of research activity will be used to leverage additional interventional support specifically for implementation to reverse the trend of profitability at the expense of student learning.