 |
Dynamic
Competition
in Education |
| The training budget alone of the
consulting firm Arthur Andersen exceeds the total budget of the University of Virginia.
The article below by Michael Margolis thinks through the implications. What might such
dynamic competition do not only to universities like Virginia or SUNY Buffalo but to
colleges like Medaille? |
| If you can generalize from that,
how might dynamic competition change your organization and your industry? Is this how you
want your children to go to college? Would you like to see Medaille's M.B.A. go in this
direction? |
| Source
May 1998 First Monday. I
condensed the article here for discussion purposes and selected quotes for the Notes
section. The original is full of specific examples as well as a satiric tone. |
Brave New Universities
by Michael Margolis
| Applying market principles to
North American universities will fundamentally alter them and possibly destroy what we
think of as a "great democratic higher education system." Ironically,
however, students in their roles as consumers are more likely to embrace than to resist
these changes. |
| While progress has been made in
cutting costs - larger class enrollments, buyouts and early retirements of senior faculty,
increased use of teaching assistants and part timers, and holding salary and benefits
increases below inflation - most universities have barely begun to realize the savings
offered by new instructional technologies. |
| To survive in the global market
universities need to: |
 |
downsize faculty by replacing classroom
lectures with both asynchronous and simultaneous interactive sessions on the Internet |
|
minimize the need for instructional
laboratories, lecture halls, and other physical spaces for teaching on campus |
|
cut costs through use of digital libraries
and networked computers, eliminating valueless scholarship, and charging a fair price for
support services that universities formerly gave for free |
|
end tenure as we know it and use
appropriate economic criteria to evaluate each professor's teaching, research, and
community service |
|
expand investment in recreational
facilities and professionalize varsity athletics |
|
| In order to succeed with implementing all of these
reforms, university managers will have to overcome those who resist marketing higher
education as a commodity. These reactionaries argue that education in the arts and
sciences is also an experience that provides worthwhile non-material benefits that enrich
a person's life over time, and they often cite philosophies of education that run back
through Thomas Jefferson to Plato. |
| In the global economy, however, customers see higher
education as training and credentialing to
secure jobs that provide better remuneration. The American public understands that every
major endeavor - with the possible exception of religion - needs to be evaluated on a
commercial basis. |
Notes
| The largest savings can be achieved through elimination of classroom lectures. |
| These lectures, which originated in the Greek
academy, have been anachronistic since the invention of the printing press. But where a
book might not match the aural-visual experience of a fine lecture, online access to the
virtual classroom certainly can. The Internet provides the power for customers to call up
an instructor's lectures at their convenience and to access supplementary materials in
multi-media formats that relate to those lectures. |
| Flexible and responsive instructional delivery
rather than ... fixed schedules and sequential structures typical of current educational
delivery |
| outsourcing desired
courses |
| As the Internet reaches a global market, local
universities no longer need to limit their course instruction to their own - and let's
face it - sometimes mediocre faculty. Instead, they can offer choice among the world's
greatest instructors online. |
| The Internet is not as yet suitable for
presenting some courses. Laboratory experiments that cannot be readily simulated, aspects
of physical education, ROTC, dance, engineering, architectural design, and the use of
musical instruments, for instance, still require facilities where students and instructors
meet one another in person. |
| The Internet provides a solution that virtually
eliminates costly libraries and computer centers. Digitized
libraries, accessible through the Internet, offer the customer more
volumes, periodicals and documents than any single university library could physically
contain. |
| Thanks to networking, computer centers for the
most part have become obsolete. |
| Professionalizing varsity athletics will foster
the loyalty of local supporters and increase proprietary sales of university clothing and
paraphernalia. |
[ Doug's note: read the following paragraph three times. The
second time,
substitute
your industry for education and your job for faculty professor.
The
third time, substitute the job you want to get with your M.B.A. ] |
| American universities will need to increase their faculties' economic
productivity if they expect to survive in the global market. They can no longer afford
workers whose primary duties involve thought and study. Managers will have to evaluate
professorial performance for the net income generated from teaching, research, and
community service. If a department's income falls short in one category or another,
professors must be assigned to additional duties within or without their departments to
protect the university's bottom line. Some faculty may become specialists in teaching
popular courses, in person or over the Internet. Others may specialize in lucrative
research enterprises in lieu of teaching. Still others may earn their keep acting as
community organizers or consultants. Once faculties are sufficiently motivated, the
possibilities are endless. Managers can encourage flexibility and decentralized
initiatives by offering bonuses to individuals, departments, or interdisciplinary programs
or projects that show the most profit. They can also track alumni contributions and offer
bonuses for long term customer satisfaction. |
| About the Author |
Michael Margolis is a
professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati.
e-mail: margolis@email.uc.edu |
 |
What do you think about Margolis' prediction
that "students in their roles as consumers are more likely to embrace than to resist
these changes"? |
|
