Is it just me, or does Steve always seem to over-complicate things so much? It's not that I don't agree with his point, but I think the problem here is much si

Is it just me, or does Steve always seem to over-complicate things so much? It's not that I don't agree with his point, but I think the problem here is much simpler: feedback loops. We can argue what sort of feedback is appropriate -- whether colleges should be judged for the amount of value they bring to life, or whether they should be judged by the job prospects of the graduates, etc. But the sad fact is that in most criteria, many people think that the product is mis-aligned with the needs of the customers. This is because there is no feedback loop for colleges to evaluate when they are doing something wrong and thereby correct it. Without a loop in place, all the theorizing in the world isn't going to make a better college, just a prettier org chart. I think there's a difference between saying something that's probably true and that we can probably agree with and actually observing the results to changes in an organization. The first thing doesn't have much of a quality criteria except for our concurrence. The second always produces results we don't like and makes us challenge our assumptions. That's why feedback loops always beat theory work.