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> Universities are businesses. They sell qualifications. Their customers are students. No, sorry. That's wrong, and quite an impoverished way to look at insti
by ardy42 8y ago
> Universities are businesses. They sell qualifications. Their customers are students.
No, sorry. That's wrong, and quite an impoverished way to look at institutions of learning (and many other institutions besides).
The "universities" that think as you describe, the for profit colleges, are an unmitigated shit show. Almost all American universities that are worth the name are either explicitly non-profit or literally part of the government. They're not businesses, and for them to act like businesses is a mistake on many different levels.
> The example of Data Science is telling
Data science is not a purely academic discipline, which was such an important qualifier in my original comment that I italicized it. There's plenty of industry jobs for those skills, so those programs can follow a different path.
- marcus_holmes 8y agoData Science used to be a purely academic discipline, of interest only to other data scientists, until it proved useful to business. I'll admit that, say, theology or philosophy are probably only ever going to provide a career path in academia. But even then, you never know. And are you really going to say to someone who has a burning ambition to study philosophy "no sorry, we're full, go study something else"?