The Business Model: An Idea Ready to Eat The World

Posted: October 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , | 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.

States of Denial

Posted: February 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economic Develpment, education, Elections, Federal Budget, poverty, Psychopaths in charge, public education, Republican presidential politics, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, unemployment, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

Gail Collins messed with Texas today. I’m rather glad she did because it shows exactly how much Texas seems to exist in a vacuum of its own making.  The head denier of reality is its wacko Governor who appears to get elected by saying the right things and doing very little.  The state that forces its antiquated views through textbooks onto the rest of the nation has a huge problem in the numbers of children having children.  This leads to all kinds of social problems that I probably don’t have to discuss here.

But, let’s just see how bad it gets down there with the denier-in-chief who seems to think abstinence education works and the Texas education system works when Texas’ own statistics show that they don’t work at all.  Republicans get elected spewing untruths and he’s a prime case in point.   The state’s out of money and like my governor Bobby Jindal, the first place Republican governors look  is for cuts to education rather than look for new revenue sources. What is worse, they talk about improving  children’s future while doing draconian cuts to children’s schools.  How do they get away with it?

“In Austin, I’ve got half-a-dozen or more schools on a list to be closed — one of which I presented a federal blue-ribbon award to for excellence,” said Representative Lloyd Doggett. “And several hundred school personnel on the list for possible terminations.”

So the first choice is what to do. You may not be surprised to hear that Governor Perry has rejected new taxes. He’s also currently refusing $830 million in federal aid to education because the Democratic members of Congress from Texas — ticked off because Perry used $3.2 billion in stimulus dollars for schools to plug other holes in his budget — put in special language requiring that this time Texas actually use the money for the kids.

“If I have to cast very tough votes, criticized by every Republican as too much federal spending, at least it ought to go to the purpose we voted for it,” said Doggett.

Nobody wants to see underperforming, overcrowded schools being deprived of more resources anywhere. But when it happens in Texas, it’s a national crisis. The birth rate there is the highest in the country, and if it continues that way, Texas will be educating about a tenth of the future population. It ranks third in teen pregnancies — always the children most likely to be in need of extra help. And it is No. 1 in repeat teen pregnancies.

Which brings us to choice two. Besides reducing services to children, Texas is doing as little as possible to help women — especially young women — avoid unwanted pregnancy.

For one thing, it’s extremely tough for teenagers to get contraceptives in Texas. “If you are a kid, even in college, if it’s state-funded you have to have parental consent,” said Susan Tortolero, director of the Prevention Research Center at the University of Texas in Houston.

Plus, the Perry government is a huge fan of the deeply ineffective abstinence-only sex education. Texas gobbles up more federal funds than any other state for the purpose of teaching kids that the only way to avoid unwanted pregnancies is to avoid sex entirely. (Who knew that the health care reform bill included $250 million for abstinence-only sex ed? Thank you, Senator Orrin Hatch!) But the state refused to accept federal money for more expansive, “evidence-based” programs.

“Abstinence works,” said Governor Perry during a televised interview with Evan Smith of The Texas Tribune.

“But we have the third highest teen pregnancy rate among all states in the country,” Smith responded.

“It works,” insisted Perry.

“Can you give me a statistic suggesting it works?” asked Smith.

“I’m just going to tell you from my own personal life. Abstinence works,” said Perry, doggedly.

There is a high cost to a state to living in this kind of denial.  Teen moms and children of teen moms are generally not a productive group of citizens.  You pay to prevent this realistically or you pay for their and your mistake to do so throughout their entire lives.  But, this seems to be the way of the new brand of Republican governor.  These guys start running for president the minute they hit the mansion.  They do so by following a litmus test of Republican items–regardless of the consequences to their states–that will make them sound like purity experts when they hit Iowa and New Hampshire.  They will undoubtedly leave their state in ruins, but that won’t be the story by the time they’re on the lecture and talking heads circuit for higher offices.

The Governor of New Jersey is doing the same thing.  He can read off a litmus list for the republican inquisition while at the same time ensuring the people of the state he governs languish.  Again, he screams about the importance of the future of the children while simultaneously downsizing it.

In a clear shot at congressional Republicans over calls for curbing entitlement programs, he said, “Here’s the truth that nobody’s talking about. You’re going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security. Woo hoo! I just said it, and I’m still standing here. I did not vaporize into the carpet.

“And I said we have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going bankrupt us,” he continued, later comparing those programs to pensions and benefits for state workers that he’s been looking to reel back.

“Once again, lightning did not come through the windows and strike me dead. And we have to fix Medicaid because it’s not only bankrupting the federal government but it’s bankrupting every state government. There you go.”

Clearly looking to blunt criticism of his famously combative style, the former federal prosecutor said there is a method to the battles he picks, insisting, “I am not fighting for the sake of fighting. I fight for the things that matter.”

The speech was titled “It’s Time to do the Big Things,” and Christie suggested the items that Obama called for as “investments” in his State of the Union address were “not the big things” that need Washington’s focus.

“Ladies and gentlemen, that is the candy of American politics,” Christie declared, adding that it appeared to be a “political strategy” – or game of budgetary chicken – that both Republicans and Democrats are playing.

“My children’s future and your children’s future is more important than some political strategy,” he said. “What I was looking for that night was for my president to challenge me … and it was a disappointment that he didn’t.

It’s difficult not to scream when you hear these folks talk about our children’s futures while cutting education, telling children abstinence fairy tales, turning down money for infrastructure improvements —like the nitwit Republican Governor Rick Scott in Florida–that will likely create better environments for business and jobs, and refusing to look at their tainted tax systems that usually punish the poor and flagrantly ignore the assets and the incomes of the rich.  It is clear whose children they have in mind.  It is not yours or mine or the majority of the people who live in their states.

These guys seem intent on turning their states into third world countries.  Many people seem more intent on letting them do it as long it doesn’t cost them anything immediate. Our fellow citizens appear beguiled by fairy tale promises and bribes of low taxes.  They should not be surprised then by a future where they and their adult children live in rented shacks together with few available public services.  They better just hope they don’t get robbed, the shack doesn’t catch fire, and there are no grandchildren needing public education.  They’re voting to downsize these things into extinction.

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