Dynamic Competition in Education

The training budget alone of the consulting firm Arthur Andersen exceeds the total budget of the University of Virginia. The excerpt below from an article by Michael Margolis (Rick mentioned it during the debate.) 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"?