3 ms·

"Profit" should be a dirty word in higher education. Primary and secondary too.

by GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

protomyth 12y ago
Why?
- spiritplumber 12y ago
  Because then the goal changes from "raising your ranking by churning out well-prepared grads" to "making a quick buck". If the profit motive is present, making a slow buck will always lose to making a quick buck as soon as people who only wear management hats show up.
  - runeks 12y ago
    > Because then the goal changes from "raising your ranking by churning out well-prepared grads" to "making a quick buck" 1. Why is it about making a quick buck? Why can't it be a long term investment? 2. Why can't an institution have both these goals at the same time (make money, churn out well-prepared grads)? They aren't mutually exclusive.
    - hackinthebochs 12y ago
      Because thats not how the world operates. The financial system is structured such that it rewards year-over-year profits and punishes anything less. A for-profit institution is going to be beholden to investors. Incentives are a strong predictor of outcome.
  - prostoalex 12y ago
    Most of the state institutions seem to be less concerned with "raising your ranking by churning out well-prepared grads" and more with "attracting enough students to pay for administrative and real estate overhead". At least with for-profit schools there's no motivation to over-build and over-hire.
- superuser2 12y ago
  Because it is (close to) impossible to write an objective measurement system that can tell the difference between a legitimately good school (as defined by the rather abstract things that we as a society want education to be) versus a school that is good at gaming metrics. And when you introduce a direct profit motive tied to metrics, it is highly likely that executives will find a way to maximize profit while minimizing cost, which likely means gaming the metrics and doing little else. Government institutions and private nonprofit institutions have this problem already (at least somewhat) with U.S. News and World, but they are at least theoretically controlled by foundations/trustees/the state, which have in common the property that they profess an interest in education itself, not education as a means of extracting money from people.
  - protomyth 12y ago
    I don't really see anything you've pointed out that doesn't apply equally to profit / non-profit. Given your second paragraph, I'm not sure you have a lot of hope that public schools are doing the right thing. "they profess an interest in education itself, not education as a means of extracting money from people." I'm sure counter-examples exist, but the best businesses are not about "means of extracting money from people", that is just a natural consequence of a decently provided service. Governments and Institutions also think in terms of "extracting money from people" although they are less honest about it (why yes, I've worked with both).
    - superuser2 12y ago
      Well-regarded nonprofit colleges are mostly doing the right thing, with some stat-gaming around things like number of student organizations, expenditure per student, etc. to jockey for higher positions in U.S. News. Not in their core educational functions. We as hackers can tell that our $1,500 Macbook Pros are better than $450 Inspirons, so Apple thrives. The problem is that it is much more difficult to distinguish between high-quality and low-quality education. With vocational training it is easy: do employers like the graduates? Do they get hired at a substantially higher rate than non-graduates? Do they get paid more? But with education it is much, much harder. There are some objectively observable traits that can (sort of) tell you whether an environment is likely to contribute to certain kinds of personal intellectual growth: do students read and respond to (at least) the Western literary canon? Are classes small enough to facilitate meaningful discussion? Are a wide variety of courses taught? How deep into their respective fields to the syllabi go? Does the school actually own the equipment and materials necessary to perform the kinds of laboratory procedures that a graduate in the sciences should have experienced? Are the classes hard enough that not everyone gets perfect scores all the time? How many hours do students need to spend on the coursework to make good grades? But all of these can be gamed. Hire lots of cheap, incompetent professors. Have small group discussions where you basically just sit there for an hour talking about nothing and wasting time because the professor is doing something else on his laptop. Force students to write papers, but have an institutional culture where they are mostly bullshitted or plagarized and no one cares. Don't actually take the time to grade students' work, but assign bad grades to the handful of students least likely to make a fuss. Assign lots of busywork. Etc. Attract students with good high school test scores by lobbying to divert government funding that would have allowed them to attend better institutions, and set your own prices cheaper. Think of any other property of legitimately good education, someone can probably find a way to appear to have that property more efficiently than actually having it. The only reason this isn't widespread is because administrators are generally people who want to provide good education and have the freedom to spend pretty much whatever they can get their hands on to do so. If you replace them with administrators who want to serve shareholders instead of students, they will find ways to hit the metrics that actually influence reveneue (i.e. rankings) while spending less than the other guys, and that will probably mean compromising the quality of the education they provide.
fwn 12y ago
Try "utility".

"Profit" should be a dirty word in higher education. Primary and secondary too.

protomyth 12y ago

Why?

spiritplumber 12y ago
Because then the goal changes from "raising your ranking by churning out well-prepared grads" to "making a quick buck". If the profit motive is present, making a slow buck will always lose to making a quick buck as soon as people who only wear management hats show up.
- runeks 12y ago
  > Because then the goal changes from "raising your ranking by churning out well-prepared grads" to "making a quick buck" 1. Why is it about making a quick buck? Why can't it be a long term investment? 2. Why can't an institution have both these goals at the same time (make money, churn out well-prepared grads)? They aren't mutually exclusive.
  - hackinthebochs 12y ago
    Because thats not how the world operates. The financial system is structured such that it rewards year-over-year profits and punishes anything less. A for-profit institution is going to be beholden to investors. Incentives are a strong predictor of outcome.
- prostoalex 12y ago
  Most of the state institutions seem to be less concerned with "raising your ranking by churning out well-prepared grads" and more with "attracting enough students to pay for administrative and real estate overhead". At least with for-profit schools there's no motivation to over-build and over-hire.
superuser2 12y ago
Because it is (close to) impossible to write an objective measurement system that can tell the difference between a legitimately good school (as defined by the rather abstract things that we as a society want education to be) versus a school that is good at gaming metrics. And when you introduce a direct profit motive tied to metrics, it is highly likely that executives will find a way to maximize profit while minimizing cost, which likely means gaming the metrics and doing little else. Government institutions and private nonprofit institutions have this problem already (at least somewhat) with U.S. News and World, but they are at least theoretically controlled by foundations/trustees/the state, which have in common the property that they profess an interest in education itself, not education as a means of extracting money from people.
- protomyth 12y ago
  I don't really see anything you've pointed out that doesn't apply equally to profit / non-profit. Given your second paragraph, I'm not sure you have a lot of hope that public schools are doing the right thing. "they profess an interest in education itself, not education as a means of extracting money from people." I'm sure counter-examples exist, but the best businesses are not about "means of extracting money from people", that is just a natural consequence of a decently provided service. Governments and Institutions also think in terms of "extracting money from people" although they are less honest about it (why yes, I've worked with both).
  - superuser2 12y ago
    Well-regarded nonprofit colleges are mostly doing the right thing, with some stat-gaming around things like number of student organizations, expenditure per student, etc. to jockey for higher positions in U.S. News. Not in their core educational functions. We as hackers can tell that our $1,500 Macbook Pros are better than $450 Inspirons, so Apple thrives. The problem is that it is much more difficult to distinguish between high-quality and low-quality education. With vocational training it is easy: do employers like the graduates? Do they get hired at a substantially higher rate than non-graduates? Do they get paid more? But with education it is much, much harder. There are some objectively observable traits that can (sort of) tell you whether an environment is likely to contribute to certain kinds of personal intellectual growth: do students read and respond to (at least) the Western literary canon? Are classes small enough to facilitate meaningful discussion? Are a wide variety of courses taught? How deep into their respective fields to the syllabi go? Does the school actually own the equipment and materials necessary to perform the kinds of laboratory procedures that a graduate in the sciences should have experienced? Are the classes hard enough that not everyone gets perfect scores all the time? How many hours do students need to spend on the coursework to make good grades? But all of these can be gamed. Hire lots of cheap, incompetent professors. Have small group discussions where you basically just sit there for an hour talking about nothing and wasting time because the professor is doing something else on his laptop. Force students to write papers, but have an institutional culture where they are mostly bullshitted or plagarized and no one cares. Don't actually take the time to grade students' work, but assign bad grades to the handful of students least likely to make a fuss. Assign lots of busywork. Etc. Attract students with good high school test scores by lobbying to divert government funding that would have allowed them to attend better institutions, and set your own prices cheaper. Think of any other property of legitimately good education, someone can probably find a way to appear to have that property more efficiently than actually having it. The only reason this isn't widespread is because administrators are generally people who want to provide good education and have the freedom to spend pretty much whatever they can get their hands on to do so. If you replace them with administrators who want to serve shareholders instead of students, they will find ways to hit the metrics that actually influence reveneue (i.e. rankings) while spending less than the other guys, and that will probably mean compromising the quality of the education they provide.

fwn 12y ago

Try "utility".