What Are the Next Great Institutions to Fall

The dropping numbers of churches and church goers is a big transformation of U.S. life. Anyone following history and current events knows even the most stately and admired people and institutions have a shelf life and are replaced with something else given enough time. I've read that when Christianity began to be known in the Roman Empire, the reaction of the establishment, Pagan leaders, scoffed at the silly religion. 

My father was one of the early college graduates who made a living at regular farming. He grew up in a time when knowledge and skill with horses was a most valued asset. Being able to look at how horse walked, a peek at the teeth and its muscle tone quickly told a prospective buyer the economic worth of the animal. Buying, raising and using horses was one of the most established industries of its time. We all know Henry Ford played a role in ending the shelf life of the horse industry.

We all know the retail mall is a dying institution just like the downtown shopping area that preceded it. 

One of the great hallowed institutions that I think might slip in time the one I spent my career in, the university. We all know it has held certain kinds of monopolies. The college degree, of course, has held a lot of economic value. Research from universities has a cache not matched by other institutions. I just read an article about employers who do not finds paying a premium for university degrees is worth the cost. We know student debt in such a millstone around the necks of college students it takes away opportunities for comfortable living standards. All of this is, in part at least, caused by the lack of cost control or oversight in universities. Universities monopoly position allowed costs and relevance to slip. Now enrollment is falling and the university's finances are challenged. Universities are a complex set of pieces that do not seem to be fitting together anymore. Could it be universities will go the way of churches?

I've wondered a specific structure we all know well might have a limited shelf life. That is "the road." But that I mean the millions of acres covered with hard surface that allows us to easily travel from one place to another. After many centuries of building roads, then widening and surfacing them, some retreat is happening. In my neighborhood, a downtown packed with people, streets are going from four lanes back to two. All over the U.S. local governments in rural areas are abandoning roads and they are returning to farmland. Lurking behind this is a monumental dilemma, a climate problem caused by petroleum-using cars/trucks and the inability to make a replacement, electric vehicles, work. I just purchased a book devoted specifically to the environmental damage caused by the roads themselves. 

Speculating about the future is fun and, I hope, a harmless pastime.