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Not about business models



In the discussion of business models we might compare the electric power
company as an analogy to higher ed. As long as the industry was allowed to
run as a monopoly and the quality of their product (electrical energy) was
good enough so that their customers did not start generating their own, the
utilities did not have to worry much about assessment. Now that the industry
is being deregulated and power quality is more critical (computers and
control devices using smart chips require clean power with little harmonic
content), any utility which does not assess the quality of their product is
at risk of economic collapse. The utility could say that the management and
engineers know more about generating power than their customers and they
will set the standards. They however choose not to do so now days. I know of
no utilities, with the exception of small municipally owned utilities, for
whom power quality assessment is not a major issue and concern. If we in
higher education bury our heads in the sand, more and more industries will
start doing their own educating as the quality of our product fails to meet
their standards. We can all agree that this would be a sad turn of events.

For as long as I have been at Fort Hays State, we have always conducted
informal assessment of our "product" with our alumni. Because of pressure
from the Board of Regents we and other departments are now formalizing that
assessment. This assessment not only is concerned with the quality of the
product (read-graduates) but whether we are teaching the correct material.
(I can think of producing the best particle physicists in the world, but if
there is limited demand for particle physicists then we are not doing our job.)

One of my sons chose to attend and get his degree in architecture from a
school that had many faculty who were practicing architects in a major
metropolitan area. Because the faculty were so closely involved outside of
the classroom with their profession, I don't think this department had to
worry much about whether they were producing graduates who were getting what
they needed. Likewise, I doubt that the Harvard business school has to ask
society what business courses they should be teaching as most of the faculty
have recently served or are currently acting as consultants for various
businesses and governmental agencies. (I don't want to give Harvard
graduates too many accolades. In a previous posting, some weeks ago, I
pointed out that my undergraduate economics course was taught by a person
with a new Harvard doctoral degree and was the most poorly taught course
that I have ever experienced.)

As another example, I am reminded of a story told to me by one of my
colleagues. He said that in his undergraduate electronics course that 14 of
the 15 weeks dealt with vacuum tubes and vacuum tube circuits. Only one week
of the course was spent on transistors. This, he said, was at a time when
electronics was heavily into transistors. The course was good, the
instructor was good and he learned a lot about vacuum tube electronics, but
it didn't meet the needs of the world. Students in the course where
apparently given excellent instruction, but it was not valid instruction for
that time. As is the case with the above example of Harvard, I don't think
the faculty at Stanford have to stay abreast of current societal needs in
electronics as they are involved in both teaching and contemporary high tech
enterprises.

A misreading of one of my previous postings implied that I was advocating
that governors and others outside the academy should dictate what we teach.
No so, and I hope that I have made my point more clearly this time. I
believe that our product are well educated students, and that the customers
for our product are the many places were they can further their education
and seek employment. My graduates may go on to do graduate work in physics,
engineering, meteorology, etc., or may go on to law school. I don't want to
be caught teaching about vacuum tubes when they need information about IC's,
nor do I want a student to dictate to me what he thinks I should teach him
so that he can be a physicist. I think I am better qualified to determine
what courses are needed. However, I can't retire to my Ivory tower and teach
what I please.