I remember how it was -- JR
Higher Education Needs Some Creative Destruction
Picking up on the ideas of Karl Marx and German historian-economist Werner Sombart, Joseph Schumpeter, in his 1942 classic Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, suggested that in a vibrant, private, competitive market economy, firms are constantly being created and destroyed. Businesses who miscalculate—those who fail to adequately meet the needs of their customers or utilize new, cost-saving technology—lose sales and profits. They may even go bankrupt. This “creative destruction” frees up resources to be utilized by firms who are better responding to consumer needs and expanding.
The destruction of businesses is part of the process of economic growth. In 2000, Enron, Sears, and Eastman Kodak were important, even iconic, American businesses, and now they are either gone or, in the case of Kodak, shadows of their former selves. Meanwhile, companies like Apple, Alphabet (Google), and Tesla have grown dramatically, and their owners have been richly rewarded. Creative destruction and expansion were occurring simultaneously, and the output and consumption of goods and services grew as well.
Contrast this to universities. My student assistant Nicholas Jadwisienczak examined the nation’s top companies in 2000 and 2022 and compared them with the leading universities in both years. He used the Fortune 500 list to find the largest corporations (by sales), and the U.S. News & World Report rankings to find the best national universities for both years. For the private corporations, only six (24%) of the top 25 in 2000 existed in the same form in 2022. Some companies merged with others, or divided themselves into multiple firms, or simply died. There was a lot of creative destruction. What about universities? Of the top 25 in 2000, 24 were still in the top 25 in 2022. The University of Virginia barely moved off the list, while New York University joined it. Most schools showed little movement. For example, Harvard went from #2 to #3. Harvard was in the top three in 2022, but it would have been so if we had U.S. News rankings in 1922, or for that matter 1822 or 1722.
With private businesses, we can track real-time changes in valuations by following the stock market, and quarterly assessments of progress by looking at changing sales. But how do we measure how Harvard is doing? Universities have no widely accepted bottom line. Consequently, it is hard to either accurately reward or penalize individuals for exemplary or poor performance.
The founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, was aware of this problem, and he pointed to a possible solution in The Wealth of Nations. Smith noted that professors at the University of Oxford had “given up altogether even the pretence of teaching” after Oxford decided to pay faculty a salary from its endowment income rather than have the professors charge students directly (keeping most of the proceeds). When professorial income depended on obtaining tuition money directly from students, faculty applied themselves, carefully preparing for class, helping students outside the classroom, etc. Today, some professors are relatively indifferent toward their students because their financial rewards come primarily from publishing articles in the Journal of Last Resort that few read and almost no one cites.
So, with some nudging from participants at a recent, marvelous Independent Institute conference in California, I have decided to write a book on “creative destruction” in higher education—how we need more of it, penalizing those who do not perform the central mission well and rewarding those who do. Maybe we should again have professorial pay depend at least partly on student fees. Maybe schools should have “skin in the game” (financial stake) when students do not repay their loans. Indeed, maybe borrowing for college should be reformed, with students selling equity (like common stock) in themselves instead of just borrowing (income share agreements). Maybe research funders should take costs more seriously, giving some grants to the lowest bidder (maybe the one getting the least “overhead” compensation for doing grant work) for topics suggested by the grantor, not the grantee.
Maybe we could better assess teaching performance if we had a standardized national exit examination. Indeed, why not let students take courses at a multitude of colleges and, if they pass a rigorous national exam, why not give them a college equivalence diploma (similar to the GED given to those who seek high-school-level diploma credentials)? Why should a single college have a monopoly on providing students educational services?
Additionally, maybe governments should get out of the business of directly funding higher education—their claim that colleges are a valuable “public good” seems increasingly dubious. At a minimum, states should permit, maybe even nudge, schools to engage in some creative destruction, killing mediocre colleges with high costs and/or poor student outcomes. That is starting to happen already, but with reduced governmental subsidization it would increase. As an intermediate step, maybe states should fund students (with scholarship vouchers) and not schools, introducing more competition in higher education financing. Schools would then be more dependent on students for dollars, which would probably lead to a significant downturn in spending for today’s woke ideological fixations.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14579
*********************************************Harvard Melts Down Over Threat to Affirmative Action
With the Supreme Court set to release a potentially monumental decision as early as this week ending racial preferences in college admissions, professors at the Harvard Graduate School of Education organized an alumni event on “Anticipating a Post-Affirmative Action World: Insights and Strategies for the Future.”
Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, only two minutes of the hourlong panel discussion on April 4 was allotted to discussing the cases before the Supreme Court.
The balance of the time was spent discussing racism, white privilege, and blaming white men—in other words, elite-level thinking at Harvard. That the plaintiffs in the case (and in a companion case arising from the University of North Carolina) before the Supreme Court are Asian is entirely irrelevant to Harvard’s freethinkers.
One of the panelists, Tony Jack, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who as a student majored in women’s and gender studies and the author of the book “The Privileged Poor,” had a lot to say about the “regime of colonialism and racism in this country.”
Jack is fearful that, as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, colleges and universities will start using “place as a proxy for race.” Although he deserves points for his clever use of alliteration and rhyme, his concern makes clear that academic achievement is irrelevant to how he would propose the admissions office make its decisions.
Jack is rattled by the prospect of race-blind admissions. He says we have to stop and ask ourselves: “Are we setting ourselves up for even more heartache?” Four minutes into the session, it was clear that the promised discussion of Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina was instead a one-sided political rant.
That was further clarified when another panelist, Angel Perez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said it was time to “get our fight on.” He hopes to see more “activism on campuses” and finds it “inspiring to see students protest.”
He also warns about “dangerous” legislation against diversity, equity, and inclusion at the state level. On that note, Jack chimed in, leading with “I don’t like to say I’m from Florida” and claiming the Supreme Court’s “divine nine” (another trademark rhyme) are corrupted in ways comparable to that of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Jack also asserted that “education isn’t a resource for the individual, but for the group” and that “it’s not about ‘I,’ but about ‘we.’” After all, it wouldn’t be a Harvard panel discussion without a nod to Marxism.
Reorienting the conversation back to racial preferences, Harvard professor Susan Dynarski lamented that it’s unfortunate that “we can’t admit students unless they apply.” Indeed, why bother with the hassle of applying if the odds disproportionately favor your admission? Dynarski stands solidly in the camp that thinks ending racial preferences would spell doom for higher education.
One major concern of the panelists was that disposing of racial preferences would negatively affect woke DEI offices. Students aside, there were grave concerns over the job security of DEI officers. (The Left has never found a jobs program they couldn’t get behind.)
Complaints about how bloated administrative staff have limited financial resources is ironic to say the least, especially at a school sitting on a $50 billion endowment.
Many of the comments in the virtual chatroom included remarks like, “It sounds like a repeal of affirmative action would lead to more black and brown students being excluded.” One student claimed that conservatives “want to keep schools white.”
Ironically, none of the white students or faculty in attendance were seen volunteering to leave their position so a black or brown person could have it. No, the problem is seemingly always some other white person, though not at Harvard, who is keeping minorities out.
This panel discussion on the future of racial preferences was full of the same Pavlovian drivel you would expect from Harvard. It’s the sort of real-life farce that The Babylon Bee can’t skewer, because the reality is a parody already.
It was politically charged, baseless, and racist in its own assumptions, masquerading as a balanced and objective discussion.
But it was also incredibly revealing, because people signal their weaknesses. Poker players say that most everyone has a tell, and by hosting this event, the woke folks at Harvard just revealed their hand. They are absolutely terrified that the Supreme Court might end their ability to discriminate on the basis of race in college admissions and expose their grift.
These “educators” sell snake oil, teaching that America is irredeemably racist, and as such, students need DEI, critical race theory, and affirmative action to succeed.
It’s a racist business racket, and they are afraid the Supreme Court might just upend their entire narrative with one simple ruling; namely, that people can succeed on merit.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/27/harvard-melts-down-threat-affirmative-action/
***************************************************Australia: Universities waste a fortune on consultants. When will they learn?
Jenna Price, writing below, lets her hostility to business apear but she is broadly right. Universities are a unique institution and need their own rules. I personally see little wrong with the original model where a university was entirely run by its senior teaching staff
My refugee parents were obsessed with education to both protect and embolden me. Mum, mother of the naughtiest girl in the school, was relieved when I graduated. At universities in those days, you actually had permission to talk in class. It was powerful and transformative.
That’s not what’s happening now. Universities are now online assembly lines where interrupting wildly is nearly impossible, and the atmosphere is more likely to be lagging from our unpredictable internet connections than anything else. Staff aren’t paid properly. Class sizes grow. Student satisfaction has plummeted.
How did we get to this? Sherryn Groch, writing for this masthead, reveals a disturbing pattern – Australian universities are spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year hiring consultants, including from scandal-drenched PwC.
Groch listed wage theft and cruel – often involuntary – redundancies, but there’s more to add to the list. Education, the experience of connection and of intellectual intimacy are being stolen from this generation. Young people have never paid so much for so little.
In the meantime, the consultants –and those who hire them – go about their business with no concern for the ethical aspects of what they are doing. Every single researcher at a university has to complete ethics approval. I doubt consultants would get to first base with such a requirement. The PwC revelations show us we should have trust issues with consultants.
How have they come to dominate the culture of higher education? Just look who is on the councils of these institutions. Academics for Public Universities say there has been a dramatic shift and now barely a third have expertise in the sector. Councils are crammed with big business types and the culture trickles down to vice chancellors and on to deans.
One academic staff member tells me she has to explain to other council members that teaching university students is not like working in a factory. Yes, you might be lucky to get a vice chancellor who can persuade a bunch of profit-hunters that universities are about something higher than money. Staff representatives can’t stand up for everyone on their own.
Business loves cutting costs and restructures. Are those the values we should bring to our future – our teachers, nurses and doctors, engineers, computer scientists, sociologists and lawyers?
In 2017, a consultant interviewed me at a Sydney cafe about the faculty in which I worked. Too noisy to record, she took desultory notes. The experience of my colleagues in that review was pretty similar, although one told me, she instructed her interviewer: “Write this down.”
I asked questions, she already had answers. My trust in the process disappeared entirely. The “strategic assessment” cost the university many thousands of dollars and ended with a document that generative AI could have written if you’d put the words visionary, mission statement and “do better with less” into its prompt.
A few years later, the whole process happened all over again. This time it was a bunch of international academics who had as much understanding of the Australian job market (or, indeed, Australian universities) as I had about herrings.
At Deakin, consultants delivered a course on change management and leadership. Jill Blackmore, Alfred Deakin professor of education and president of the Australian Association of University Professors, who sat in on the course, said: “Worst course I’ve ever been in, and we paid for it. It did not understand what leadership in a university was all about.”
Just now, at a university near you, a consultant has been called in to investigate the use of offices. The academics have said, repeatedly, hot-desking and open-plan offices might be OK if you didn’t have to deal with sobbing students and more recently, sobbing colleagues. After two years of consultations, enthusiasm has cooled and the report is shelved. Money for nothing.
Look, every organisation, be it universities, hospitals, telcos, or banks, needs to have reality checks. But let’s engage experts who think about the national good and not the bottom line.
The nation’s 10 top-ranked universities alone spent at least $249 million on consultancies last year, more than they spent before the pandemic.
Universities spend money on consultants instead of education. Every teaching academic I know has had to defend paying casual staff – those running tutorials – to attend lectures. I once had to do an entire cost proposal which took me hours for the sheer bloody-mindedness of my then-boss – at the same time, we were wasting money on consultants.
The University of Melbourne’s Michael Wesley, author of the new book Mind of the Nation: Universities in Australian Life, knows we have a problem. We hire people from the corporate sector, and they lose their minds at what they see as waste.
“But as my boss points out (Duncan Maskell who last week called for free higher education), we are a not-for-profit organisation ... [the] ruthless pursuit of shareholder value is utterly alien to the university. The corporatisation of [Australian] universities is almost unique in the world.”
******************************************************
My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
******************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment