The Business Model: An Idea Ready to Eat The World
Posted: October 15, 2011 Filed under: just because | Tags: private goods, public goods, selling public assets 12 Comments
We’ve all heard it, ad infinitum. Governments should run like a business. Healthcare is looking for a new business model. Prisons are emerging profit centers.
And so, reading of Governor Rick Scott’s solutions for trimming Florida’s public college and university costs, I was not surprised to scan the words ‘business model.’ Scott is tapping into Rick Perry’s strategy, The Seven Breakthrough Solutions for cutting college costs in Texas. The ‘solutions’ seem almost reasonable, until you peel up the corners.
Now let’s get real. College tuitions have skyrocketed across the country. Anyone who has been to college recently or sent a child [or children] through a University system can attest to the financial burden the 4-5 year pricetag can exact. Few students or parents would reject reasonable methods to trim expenses, make universities run more efficiently and ultimately make higher education more affordable.
But are we willing to trim cost and quality in tandem? Will we accept the quick fix and sacrifice departments and/or fields of study because [on first glance] they will not produce degrees or students useful to Rick Scott’s or Rick Perry’s vision of America? That would be a world where everything is one big business deal, oozing with profit for owners and shareholders and populated with workers with the ‘right’ degrees. Those degrees would translate into immediate jobs for the same business types who created the system to begin with, a self-perpetuating loop.
What could go wrong?
Plenty.
Let me say I have nothing against degrees in science, technology, engineering and math [STEM]. We need more degrees in these fields; emerging economies [China, India] are killing us in the sheer number of technical/science students they’re preparing for the future. But not everyone is suited for these majors. And surprise! There is still a place in the world for the humanities, a background from which the likes of JFK [history/international affairs], Ronald Reagan [sociology] and Steve Wynn, business guy [English] graduated and did pretty well for themselves.
My problem is pushing specific degrees at the exclusion of all others. For instance, slashing funds for grants and scholarships in Liberal Art programs—Scott has a particular dislike of anthropology–mocking the value of academic research [yes, there are flaky university studies out there but the vast majority of academic research has broad, important, if not immediate applications]. Or in terms of evaluating faculty? The approach would measure faculty members as profit or loss centers [this gauged on the faculty member’s time spent in the classroom, against the outside funding said faculty member manages to encourage and net]. A likeability quotient is added to the frothy mix and student evaluations are weighted in determining tenure. These applied standards are in lieu of placing primary value on a faculty member’s expertise in his or her field. College/university accreditation? It complicates the reform measures. So poof! Get rid of it.
Perhaps more importantly, this approach dismisses the true purpose and nature of higher education: to teach everything there is to teach; to produce graduates who have critical thinking skills, an understanding of the world around them and the people who inhabit that world now and those of the past; and finally, inspiring creativity, which in turn inspires innovation.
If you want drones then set up a factory, an assembly line. If you want enlightened adults, provide the freedom to choose, develop, think, consider, re-consider. Support risk-taking in whatever field of study a student chooses or has a passion and talent for. Encourage students to try their hand, hearts and minds at everything. Inspire students to go their own way and take those creative leaps that lead to startling advancements. Respect the learning process, the exquisite power and beauty of discovery and the uniqueness of the individual.
Earth to the Rickety Twins: One size does not fit all. Easy solutions to complex problems are doomed to failure. Just ask Herman Cain about his 999 economic plan, which is crumbling under scrutiny.
Dare I say that not all things fall within the purview of a business model, a structure that seeks profit before all else. Yet, this is the main ‘fix’ being hawked like a bad toupee across the country. Run ‘it’ [fill in subject of choice] like a business and all things will flourish.
Well, here’s a thought: The Seven Breakthrough Solutions that Rick Scott wishes to co-opt for the State of Florida is more like the Seven Percent Solution of Sherlock Holmes, a wicked addiction. Like any drug habit, the fix is a sweet, temporary illusion but the damage it creates can be permanent. Even fatal.
And btw, just to voice a pet peeve of mine: people are not human resources. Let’s return to that accurate, quite serviceable term: human beings.
We’ll all be better off for it.
For a very direct and rather withering response to the ‘Breakthrough Theory ‘ in Texas, a business style, market-driven proposal for higher education, see comments by Dean Randy L. Diehl, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin, here.
And from the St. Augustine Record a report on Rick Scott’s dandy proposals of Breakthrough Education Policy [more a Texas carbon copy] here.
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I really think most of our politicians have completely left the world of reason these days to live on planet More Money for Me. It’s not about anything else. We no longer invest in our own people.
It’s about reducing everything to a commodity [regardless of what it is] with a particular pricetag and profit attached. So, the University or college is akin to a factory, where the ‘product’ coming off the line is the diploma. Students are the ‘customers.’ And the Profs? They seem to be regarded as necessary evils–expensive facilitators of the ultimate ‘sale.’ There doesn’t appear to be a great deal of consideration for what teaching is all about, the relationship between the professor and his or her students or what that diploma ultimately means [its actual value] to the student or the society at large.
I fear it’s what happens when we allow MBAs and accountants take over the world with very specific world views and political leanings.
Not pretty.
Every one seems to have disappeared for awhile! I hope folks take time to come back and read this today!!
Perry couldn’t push that on universities in TX. Hope it doesn’t take root elsewhere.
Great topic — today the husband and I were at a famous archaeological dig site. And we spent quite a bit of time speaking with the curator of the on site exhibit. She had heard about the idiot Governor of Florida bias against Anthropology. One detail I learned is that said idiot Governor’s daughter just graduated with a degree in Anthropology.
I was a dual major — Psy and Anthro — and in my opinion every college student should take at least one semester of Anthro. She felt that Anthro should be taught in High School.
But then this is the educational model of Conservatives — just rote learning and multi choice tests.
I’m told by the people who are at the Anthro related sites that the Engineers and technical folks love visiting Early American ruines — and many have a minor or wished they had taken Anthro when they were in college.
Archaeology is in fact very technical — and those skills are transferable to other occupations.
Way to go Gov — insult your daughter and piss off a whole lot of people — who vote.
Ooooo, what a juicy tidbit that is, northwestrain. And how funny. I had no idea Scott’s daughter was an anthropology major. A rebel in the family! That makes more sense–the objection is personal, close to home. I really wondered why Scott picked Anthro to dump on in public because it only represents 1% of all Florida graduates. Nice detail.
Peggy Sue, you hit the nail on the head. They DO want drones. They don’t want anyone with critical thinking skills. They want robots who won’t and can’t think for themselves. All the better to control us.
That’s what I find ‘very’ disturbing about these shortcut measures, Deborah–this push to turn everyone into specific cogs in the production wheel. Just doesn’t sit well with me and I think ultimately it’s dehumanizing. And yes, it’s a way to control people and have them serve a particular agenda.
As a parent of a university freshman let me just say that the cost of a university education in this country has become absofuckinlutely ridiculous. It hasn’t been that long since my undergrad days, and the increase in tuition has multiplied times 10 at least, since I went to school. Add room and board times ten to that, and you have some idea what prospective students are facing. Keep in mind that I grew up in NY State back in the day when a NY State public education was the gold standard (okay, maybe tied with California) and NY State provided students who scored at the top, a full academic scholarship for tuition (not room and board) to any SUNY university, so my perspective is a little bit different than that of younger people, but I know what can be done. I grew up in a lower/middle class, blue collar family with 5 kids who never could have gone to college in today’s world. Had it not been for the fact that 3 of 5 of us earned a NY State Regents Scholarship which allowed us to attend SUNY schools tuition-free, my parents would NEVER have afforded college for all of us. NEVER. The truth is that, what has happened with the cost of a university education in this country, is just another example of the cost of being middle-class becoming higher and higher.
Whoa – I earned a NYS Regents Scholarship too and I didn’t realize I could have attended SUNY tuition free with it.
When I went, it was income based, but since there were three kids in my family in college at the same time, my parents’ net taxable income was divided by three. As a result, we qualified for full tuition. It’s the only way all five of us were able to go to college.
janicen, I’ve been there, done that with University fees, both paying off my own school loans, struggling in the early days as my husband finished his undergraduate and graduate work, and then scraping money together for our kids to go through college.
The costs have become obscene for many families and students. There’s no denying that.
But . . . applying simple solutions or squeezing programs through a particular political funnel, as if one size fits all, is more often than not the exact wrong way to go.
I haven’t done the research yet so I don’t have backup data but I suspect part of the reason costs and debt burden have skyrocketed is the way the finance programs have been packaged and sold to the public. We’ve also seen a heavy priority shifted to star athletic programs with enthusiastic alumni support and gobs of money thrown in that direction. I’m sure there are other reasons and far better solutions out there to tackle the problem and alleviate the burden on the middle-class. We should be promoting the goal of an educated populace; our democratic way of life depends on it. But reducing the quality of education and/or turning everyone into debt slaves are counter-productive measures [except for the grinning gatekeepers, of course :0)].
I’m going to be away and off-line this coming week but I think when I get back I’ll follow up on this idea and storyline and start doing the reading and data-mining the subject deserves. So, I’ll come back to this idea because I have the niggling sense it parallels other hotspots in the system.