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.
What, fighting with professors isn't what college is really about?
One thing is for sure...
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).
Our richest, most sucessful people in the Western World have largely been those w/o a college degree. Some, like Dave Thomas (Wendy's) didn't even have a high school degree. While there is some correlation between smarts / ambition and a college degree, it is by no means a direct connection.
Don't get me wrong, I've got a BA from a great college plus a 90-semester-hour Master's degree, and I'm considering going for the JD soon. However, I also know that my computer training has put me into a middle-class lifestyle, which is something that doesn't at all require classes in dead Greek poets.
The biggest hurdle, as I've said here before, is that the customer (whether the student, or the parent, or, even stretching it, corporate America that places value in college degrees) has no control over the product. Parents or students can pressure Trustees, but as soon as they pressure presidents who in turn try to reform faculty procedures, the faculty screams "tyranny" and "freedom of speech," and they back off.
Worse, 60% of my students get some sort of financial aid. This allows universities to jack up the prices, I think by 50% or more. It's like one of those jewelry stores at the mall: "Huge sale---50% off!" But they have already raised prices 60%. Until we can get rid of financial aid, and tie the produce to the consumer, there is no hope for reforming universities as they now exist.
How would you sanction a student's learning equivalent? The college degree, with all its faults, provides some guarantee that the student has, indeed, learned something.
A couple of generations ago being a university man (or woman) carried status in society or the market place. A degree was a lifetime free pass to the middle class. All that is gone now. The university up the road has 2 females to every 1 male students. Definitely a holding tank for post-adolescents. Thoughtful parents might hesitate at paying the hundred thousand or more for a degree in Women's Studies or Social Work. The more intelligent parents I know, (mostly Asian), are sending their sons to high quality technical and vocational schools.
At least 90% of college administrations and faculties are left liberal lunatics. So if you spend $20,000 to $40,000 a year to send the kid to college, you can be sure they will receive non-stop propaganda with a few basic themes: hate Bush and Republicans; worship at the altar of Clinton, Kennedy & Co.; socialism is good and capitalism is evil; terrorists are misunderstood freedom fighters, but our troops are murderers, Israel threatens world peace, etc. Your student leaves with no understanding of the evils of Stalin, Marxism, Leninism, Hitler, or Saddam Hussein, and his or her brain has been washed to believe that the history of the United States is something to be ashamed of. Students graduate with little understanding of how our economy works. All of this is subsidized by the Federal government, your tax money. The universities and their staffs are obsolete, overpriced, anti-capitalist, profoundly "stuck on stupid", and even subversive.
"College education" in America is a reward to junior for not burning the house down, and to keep little missy under her family's wing for another four years. Ask your average spender of other people's money what they are actually doing with this time and most responses equal the blank stare.
Ssshhh. Nobody tell China and India. They seem real big on formal education. Well, we'll have the last laugh when we stop wasting money on college educations.
"The more intelligent parents I know, (mostly Asian), are sending their sons to high quality technical and vocational schools."
So why don't we make technical schools equal is status to colleges?
For instance, most major corporations require a college degree for their IT hires, when what is really needed are techinical skills (and hence, technical schools!).
When was the last time you heard a Jewish mother joke that had a punchline "My son/daughter graduated as an electrician" instead of ohh-ing and ahh-ing over the law school grad?
Well, we'll always need doctors and lawyers, but I do think techinical schools can take up a lot of the slack for engineering and other similar professions.
I do have a BS in Marketing, but my current job actually did not require it. Funny thing is I also make about twice the money many of my college classmates do with their jobs that required their degrees...
I thought college sucked worse than the Army.
That was because I actually learned something in the Army.
very well stated!
"A technical school can't teach engineering or architecture or science or any number of the vital disciplines required for the 21st century."
Arguably, neither do most colleges.
In fact, I used to be a neigbor to Purdue. I recall a time when I (the liberal arts guy) went on a canoe trip with a bunch of EE and ME students. After watching them struggle to put up the tent for 15 min I finally jumped in and had it up in 2-3 minutes.
Any number of people will tell you that the university training doesn't really train you to do a job, but rather proves that you are trainable when you get to your first job where they train you!
Depends on the students.
Look, the last "big idea" was more than half a century ago when a couple of guys hooked up a pair of alligator clips to a hunk of rock in New Jersey.
Whoever gets to the next "big idea" wins the next century. And the only way to get the next "big idea" is through education.
Well IMHO, Drucker is off target on this one.
True, there will likely be some change driven by the need for competitive efficiency. But classroom education isn't the only valuable experience that traditional colleges provide. For most students, it is their first opportunity to live away from home "on their own". (LOL! Yeah, I know... but it is a transition period to adulthood nevertheless) And in addition to the serious work of education, students will always need extracurricular diversions (such as sports) to recharge their batteries. Drucker's economic efficiency will never displace the old adage "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
My prediction: competition of students in the marketplace will drive out some of the waste "fluff" courses, and perhaps summer breaks. More students will be attending year 'round, and looking for more substantive course content. But the ivy covered buildings will remain in use.
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