Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Students and Tests - Kyle and business models



Roger I think I agree with you that we should not just ignore the tendency
of administators to try to force education to fit a business model. As you
pointed out, this would be very naive. As David Dockstader mentioned in
another posting, lawyers and doctors are similar to educators in that they
are also self regulated for the most part (or have been up till now). And
as we are seeing, the medical industry is being reformed, not by the
physicians but by accountants and politicians. I very much would like to
see the education "industry" monitored or reformed, if needed, by the
edcuators and not the accountants or politicians.

My initial complaint was just that the busness model (with consumers and
products be they students or taxpayers) is not necessarily the only way or
even a particuarly good way to think of higher edcuation. We need to
educate our trustees and taxpayers better as to what education actually is
so they understand the difference.

We have had a very active board of trustees for the IU system over the past
few years. They have started several campaigns to improve the
"productivity" of IU faculty. Fortunately we as a faculty have been fairly
successful so far in convincing them that, yes, we really are doing our job
and doing it quite well in fact. Unfortunately this, rather than physics,
has consumed a great deal of my time over the past two years (as I was
involved in the facutly governance structure for the past two years). I can
say that the days (if there ever were any) of a tenured faculty saying,
"you can't touch me and I'm going to do what I want" are long gone.

I have also seen the IU system move towards "responsibility centered
budgeting". This basically means that units that are more "productive" get
more of the resources. Pushed to the extream, this could easily mean that a
unit (such as physics on our campus) which will never have huge numbers of
students could be seriously cut in terms of support. So, yes, I am not in
an ivory tower, I am very aware of the consequences of a business model for
education.

This is why we need to make it very clear to anyone who will listen that
the educational process is much more complicated than a simple
consumer/product way of thinking. I personally try to avoid any mention of
those terms in public conversations and try to counter those who do.

kyle

As much as we might like to think of education as an ivory tower where we
teach the joys of physics, etc., we must remember who it is that pays our
salaries. As we continue toward the 21st century, I'm afraid that we are
going to be held more and more accountable to those who pay our salaries and
provide funds for equipment. To think otherwise is wishful and naive
thinking on our parts.

The main problem with thinking of education as a service industry is that I
can think of no other service where the quality of the service is almost
totally determined by the provider rather than the customer (no matter if
you think the customer is the student or the company that hires him or her,
or the tax payer). For better or worse, we, as "providers" set standards
and monitor our own quality. I really don't see how it can be otherwise.
Supposidly we are the most knowledgible about our particualr subject and
therefor best capable of determining what someone else (students) needs to
know about that subject and I don't see a way around that.

Maybe Indiana is different than elsewhere, but my understanding of the
situation is that we work for others. In my case it is the state of Kansas,
and the legislature, through the Board of Regents, is interested in how and
where its money is spent. They want accountability and are requiring that
each university, college and department establish procedures for assessment.
Frankly, I fought it for many years until I realized that without being able
to provide positive outcomes the physics department here, or any other
department, was in danger of being drastically reduced or at worst eliminated.

As providers, we can set standards for our courses and programs. I can do an
exceptional job of teaching concepts of physics. I can select a few topics
and do all sorts of exciting things with the students with the result that I
have to turn students away from my highly popular physics classes and
program. (Naturally, I am exaggerating for effect here.) Assessment of this
program would be very high. However, there is another facet to the
assessment which is whether I am providing students with the "tools" that
they need after graduation? Whether you argue for the "less is more"
philosophy or any other view point doesn't matter. All we need to ask is
whether we are turning out the best product that meets the needs of our
customers?

For years the American automobile industry turned out large, heavy gas
guzzlers. The industry did not assess the American public. Chrysler, Ford
and GM fell on hard times because they were producing automobiles for
themselves and not concerned with whether they were meeting the needs of
their customers. Imports of smaller, better made and more fuel efficient
cars made heavy in roads on American automobile sales. American industry was
not practicing one of the major parts of TQM which is to determine who the
customer is and to assess whether the product produced is up to quality.

I don't like to be forced into this business model either but to oppose it
is much like trying to stop the sun from shining and may be extremely
foolish on our part.


I agree with Karl and Allen, the closest a buisness model comes to applying
to education is as a contract between teacher and student; formed to
participate in something similar to a fitness center where the teacher
provides equipment and coaching and the student does the work. In the
contract idea, however, I don't see any way to break the contract if the
student does everything in the contract and still just isn't cut out to do
physics. We do not give an A for effort. Likewise I don't see coaches in a
gym telling clients that they aren't preforming well enough and they should
quit. Sometimes as teachers we have to do that because WE are the ones who
determine quality.

kyle

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
! kyle forinash 812-941-2390 !
! forinas@indiana.edu !
! Natural Science Division !
! Indiana University Southeast !
! New Albany, IN 47150 !
! http://Physics.ius.indiana.edu/Physics.html !
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Roger A. Pruitt
Fort Hays State University
Hays, KS

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
! kyle forinash 812-941-2390 !
! forinas@indiana.edu !
! Natural Science Division !
! Indiana University Southeast !
! New Albany, IN 47150 !
! http://Physics.ius.indiana.edu/Physics.html !
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!