Posted on 11/25/2005 6:02:35 AM PST by billorites
The modern university is a relic that will disappear in a few decades. That prediction was made by Peter Drucker, the management genius who just died at 95 and usually got things right.
His words brought an uncharitable smile to my face as I recently strolled across the ivied campus of Brown University, in Providence, R.I. At the time, maintenance crews were busy removing leaves. Campus officials were still dealing with the aftermath of an especially drunken Saturday night. And most everyone was excited that the football team had taken the Ivy League championship.
No doubt, some education was going on, but the question nagged: Is this an efficient setup for improving young minds? Not very, according to Drucker. "Today's buildings are hopelessly unsuited and totally unneeded," he said. Satellites and the Internet can easily make classrooms obsolete.
We now read that professors at Purdue, Stanford, Duke and other universities are recording their lectures. Students download the talks on their iPods and listen to them whenever. The "whenever" can be while driving, lifting weights or between songs by Black Eyed Peas and the Pussycat Dolls.
The profs say that letting students hear the lectures on their own frees classroom time for penetrating discussions. The same conversations, however, could be held over the Internet -- or, for that matter, in a room at the public library.
Furthermore, the professors could let non-students download their lectures and charge them royalties, just like the Black Eyed Peas. Ordinary folks already buy courses on tape or CD. For example, The Teaching Company is now selling a virtual major in American history -- 84 lectures on 42 audiotapes -- at the bargain price of $109.95. It covers everything from "before Columbus" to Bill Clinton, and the lecturers are top-drawer. Some of them teach at Columbia University, where a single history course runs you $3,207.
Herman Melville said that "a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Melville didn't need college to write "Moby Dick." He needed to read and spend time in the world. Before sailing out on a whaler in 1841, he had already worked on his uncle's farm and as a cabin boy on a ship to England.
Peter Drucker urged high-school graduates to do likewise: Work for at least five years. If they went on to college, it would be as grown-ups.
You wonder whether colleges, stripped of their education function, wouldn't find other lives as spas, professional-sports franchises or perhaps lightly supervised halfway houses for post-adolescents. The infrastructure is already in place.
Over at Kenyon College, in Ohio, the students have a new $60 million athletic center. The highlights include a 12,500-square-foot workout area and an indoor track with eight lanes just for sprinting. The pool has 20 short-course and nine long-course lanes. And, like any upscale health club, this one has a cafe.
Speaking of sports, colleges spend huge numbers of "education dollars" on keeping their football coaches happy. For example, the University of Texas is giving Mack Brown a compensation package this year totaling $3.6 million. UT's highest-paid academic, Steven Weinberg, earns about $400,000, and he has a Nobel Prize in physics.
The universities claim that popular football and basketball teams are profit centers that help pay for learning. In truth, few produce a surplus even for their schools' sports programs. Athletics pay their own way at only about 10 colleges, according to Andrew Zimbalist, an economist at Smith College who specializes in sports.
And with all due respect to the Texas Longhorns, if they were such a fabulous cash machine, there would be no need for the Longhorn Foundation. The foundation, which raises money for UT athletics, notes on its website that revenues from ticket sales, television and ads cover less than half the operating expenses of the university's sports program.
University presidents, meanwhile, are working on their own pay packages. Several already make more than $1 million, which has become the new goalpost. Most justify their incomes by their ability to raise money for new buildings.
Of course, these are the buildings that will soon be relics, according to Peter Drucker. Look at these shining new facilities and think: What fine condos they will someday make.
Post graduate testing!
Yep, parents gotta still send 'em off to college so they can at least learn to do their own laundry.
My sainted mother, who just died last week, did that very thing. I was born when she was 29, a high school dropout, and she started as a freshman the next month. She pursuaded the local college to let her take a GED (back when it was a "veterans" bennifit, not meant for others). She finished her 4 year degree in 2 1/2 years, mainly because the college charged by the semester, not the class, so she took as many classes as possible, did correspondence work, and sometimes got permission to take more classes than allowed. By the time I was 12, she finished her PhD.
She was the most "successful" person I've ever met that pulled herself up by the bootstraps from abject poverty. And she succeded because she didn't start college until 29.
[The Gov't, not to mention the economy, is no longer gonna pay for kids to party for 4 years and then exit with no tangible gain in productivity over their high school degree (at least that cannot be explained by maturation). ]
I went to Stanford, learned a lot, but truthfully the by far biggest bang for the buck was the local community college. My brother got me hooked on the tapes from the The Teaching Company, and those are great.
The real problem is replacing hands on labs and technical hardware. So maybe only the hard sciences belong at the college.
One doesn't get an education, one gets an indoctrination. That's the problem.
Students pretty much get what they want out of it. Some, not all, pick up some funny ideas to play around with and others suck the place dry in their quest for an education. If a parent is worried about sending an 18 year old off to college and having them return a raving commie after four years, then they didn't do a particularly good job in raising the kid.
The author missed one of the most important parts of the issue - the bulk of the teachers in most colleges and universities have no practical experience - none - zero - nada - zip.
They are very good when it comes to theory - hence their predilection to communism, socialism, and liberalism. But they are very short on facts. Who should be teaching business in college? A businessman who has run a successful company or a student? What about advanced medicine? Engineering?
Notice I called the professors by their correct name - student. They were students for 16 to 22 years well insulated from the problems of life by their parents first, then the world of academia (through fellowships, grants, loans, teaching assistance, etc).
I have two uncles that are about ten years apart and they are as different as night is to day. The older never went to college and he is a very practical and conservative person. His brother is a tenured college professor teaching at Forham who is extremely liberal almost up to the cool-aid drinking class. The fireworks between the two is awesome and very interesting (dare I say instructive?) to watch.
I agree totally. 3 or more years of working in the real world straight out of high school has a way of changing a young persons priorities. The most valuable school is the "School of Hard Knocks". It makes you grow up real fast.
You mean technical schools have value? No say it ain't so! (Major Sarcasm!)
Could it possibly mean that the market is telling us how wealth is really created?
In all sincerity, technical schools must train it's student how to articulate what they know and how they know it effectively. The reason the technical trades have lost ground is because the argument for their value to society has not been promoted properly. The schooled econ majors have made for instance a case against the value of manufacturing. It is in my opinion a crime, but none the less they have made an eloquent argument that sounds good enough to have hoodwinked an entire nation in thinking so.
Engineers and technical people cannot sit quietly in there cubicles' and expect others to realize their value, a little spin (marketing) on their part would go along way.
I am by no means digging other proffesions, we need doctors, pilots, MBA's, teachers, as well as plumbers, electricains and other trades people.
A bicycle wheel needs all of it's spokes for strength, not just a few.
Are there any on-line schools that are acredited where you ccan get a full BS/BA degree? I know most schools require some amount of "in class" time for a degree.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology seems to manage fairly well.
On the other hand, I can't think of a technical school that requires 12 semester hours in Multicultural Awareness courses, let alone offers whitewater rafting as a major.
A university "education" anymore just implies four years of partying interspersed with Marxist indoctrination.
Two thirds of all state operated universities could be safely eliminated without a single negative impact on the economy or the culture. What an enormous savings to the taxpayers!
Like we need universities because we need more lawyers. Right! (/megasarcasm)
College as we know it is definitely going the way of the dinosaurs.
There's no need to spend that kind of time and money for something a kid can accomplish otherwise. And that doesn't even begin to address the adverse effects of the typical college Spring Break-all-the-time environment.
The only reason college as we know it has survived this long is that this generation's parents came up with the view that it's very important to go to a name school, to get an advanced degree right away, etc.
None of that is true. I can't tell you the number of kids we know whose parents spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on their educations and who then went on to get the same job and the same career path they could have gotten if they'd gone a much cheaper, faster route.
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Interesting points. Thanks
What you said, every last word. The university degree basically means nothing more than what it used to mean to graduate high school.
Many states allow dual enrollment of high school students in community colleges (sometimes free tuition). This works especially well for homeschooled students, but any kid could accomplish two years of college at no or a tiny price, while still at home.
Then, since they're already ahead of the game, they could finish up by going to college (or taking online courses) part-time while working at something that actually helps prepare them for adulthood.
Well said!
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