Posted on 01/31/2006 8:29:03 AM PST by Marxbites
"When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course." — Peter Drucker
For-profit educational services. Capitalizing off of instructional training. Bankrolling tutelage on a gravy train. Go ahead and sneer; cringe and shudder — get it out of your system. Oh the horror, running a profitable business that includes many of the facets of a traditional higher education.[1]
Perhaps this is one of the reasons that a disproportionate amount of the Ivory Tower is socialistically inclined; subconsciously they may fear that the market value of their research, teaching and professional existence subsists among relatively strange bedfellows, those whose productivity fluctuates along the poverty line.
A flatter world
Will distance education and online courses replace the intimacy of round table discussions with high-caliber teachers? David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale, does not think so. Based upon my own experiences I would have to agree. However we both believe a free market in degree granting, one liberated from political regulation and business myopia, is just around the corner.............
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
"The tenure-system was originally created to secure academic freedom for professors — offering flexibility and openness to speak and research freely without fear of repercussion. (See the Hoppe debate.) However from a financial perspective Stephen Kerr notes that, "raising an employee's salary creates an annuity for his or her organizational lifetime. Furthermore, since future increases are normally calculated as a percentage of salary, erroneously increasing someone's pay will tend to become geometrically expensive over time."[9] In other words, a firm should reward productivity, not tradition or longevity. Therefore performance-based contracts can be used in place of a tenure system, an idea now-embraced by numerous college presidents as well."
As long as there is funding enough to talk about the impending doom of funding higher education then the system is healthy and wealthy and will survive indefinitely.
The tenure system should be done away with. I've seen too many profs "retire" after shortly after tenure. If one has complete job security for the rest of one's life, there is no real motivation to work hard.
bump
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The old-line major universities IMHO are looking at roughly the same future as the antique media is experiencing right now.
Local junior colleges and "branches" of state colleges in my part of the world are offering students a more efficient and economical path to a college degree, and their growth in enrollment as a result has been just short of spectacular.
Another factor to be considered in all this is the increased relative population of non-tenured faculty in those same schools. Most of the faculty I'm working with right now (yeah, I started my new career path as a college prof)have practical experience to bring to the dance, and I think we're turning out superior graduates as a result.
Only bad experience I've had in this new life was the culture shock I caused to others during that first faculty meeting I attended. Must have been my POW-MIA hat.
Personally, I don't think that Universities will be brought back to actually SERVING their students again until some of them begin to close for lack of funds and go belly up!
I would LOVE to see several dozen Universities close their doors forever.
Harvard Law!!!!
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