Business Leaders See Higher Education as Hampering Economic Growth

OK. So let me get this straight. Most of these execs, I bet, have MBAs or BBAs. We know that these students generally are not the top achievers in high school or college. They view colleges as vocational training. And they are taught methods of cost accounting and management that, while appropriate for private firms, make no sense whatever in colleges and universities. But we are to take their opinions–for this is what they are–seriously? 

There are significant problems in higher ed, including the quality of our graduates. While “business leaders” are an important constituency, they are not particularly qualified to make these pronouncements.

The real hypocrisy I see here is that the same business leaders fight tooth and nail for tax breaks that diminish the quality of education from pre-school through college and then they have the stones to decry “its indifferent quality”. Regardless of their own levels of intellectual attainment, it is pure hubris to sit in judgement of a situation they have helped create.

It is always a bit disconcerting when elitists turn on each other. Why should business leaders begrudge faculty their unmerited sinecures and their ability to employ the resources of donors, taxpayers, and students to their selfish uses. Country clubs and faculties have a lot in common. Executives and tenured faculty should find common cause and work together in support of privilege and inequality.

There may be some good that comes out of this report.  For example, the CEOs criticize universities for paying coaches high salaries (one CEO invokes the figure of $8 million for a coach — probably a little high).  At the same time, university presidents and boards invoke the model of corporations and business to justify paying a coach a multi million dollar salary.  How about if these two factions meet and resolve this — or, at least, get their stories straight. 

It’s all about knocking down the wages of college graduates and keeping profits up and HE  could being doing the wost outstanding job in the world and for the future as well.  Unfortunately, I saw all of this in the early 1980′s when I was the finance person at an HE Board in the middle of the high tech industry, where i was told that 1/2 educated at 1/2 cost so they could be offered 1/2 pay was better than better educated as higher costs and educated enough to be a pain in the butt.  Higher ed costs too much but not for the reasons people think or claim; students loans have been the cash cow for the financial industry and have inflated costs bu allowing parents to be gamed by both sides in a wealth transfer scam.  the same is true of the other cash cow, expenditures on technology, much of which is unneeded and tossed away in a year or two and of course yuppie living quarters and life styles that make me laugh in terms of the closet I shared with 2 other students and learned perfectly well as an undergrad in nyc.  How much did that guy make managing Harvard’s endowment??  There was a time when that sort of thing was done pro bono and those profits went to keeping costs down; but alas it looks like HE may return to its origins;namely, Greece.  if one knows any education history, one will know that this is far, far, far from the first rodeo on this theme and the bail comes when the cash cow is not giving as much milk as before and the market is about to collapse because the jobs promised are not there and of course we know whose fault that is.

No more liberal arts education? Just “mouse-clicking” education? I thought we already had this.  It’s called vocational education.  Colleges can accomplish more with rigorous high school curriculum.

Nothing new here, just another call to FURTHER subordinate education – primary, secondary and “higher” – to the needs of business. Business leaders have been at this for well over 100 years. For a some historical perspective , read Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Future of our Educational Institutions” (1872), Thorstein Veblen , The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men (1918), Upton Sinclair, The Goose-step: A Study of American Education (1922) and The Goslings: A Study of American Schools (1924), Raymond E. Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency: A Study of the Social Forces that have Shaped the Administration of the Public Schools, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, and John Gato, The Underground History of American Education (2006). Not only have capitalists long sought, and largely succeeded, in getting the KIND of education they want but they have also largely succeeded in transferring the COSTS of that education to the rest of us. In recent times, there was a brief period in the 1960s and 1970s, when this subordination was questioned, even fought – by students all across the country, from Berkeley and Stanford on the West Coast to Columbia and Harvard in the East. In the process, the chains of subordination were loosened and business influence was at least partly delegitimized. But since the 1980s corporations have spent billions overcoming such questioning, reestablishing their grip and jacking up their demands. Fortunately, the “occupy” movement is beginning to spread from Wall Street and the business community to campuses, so who knows – maybe there is hope for some effective disruption of the drumbeat of business demands.

One word: Bankers.
If any were in this small survey sample, then “inability to control their costs, lack of adaptability, and meager accountability” is nothing but the pot calling the kettle…

If industry wants to have a say in how higher education works, they need to have some skin in the game – that is money. I don’t mean the random feel-good donations that they make now. I mean actual committed funding streams. Right now, students and the federal/state government fund education for the most part, so administrators in colleges listen to those voices. That is why we have such a “the student is our customer” mentality.  Money talks. If companies want to be a customer too, they need to pay.

Of course we’re hampering economic growth. We’re teaching critical thinking, and they can’t stand it, because so much of their economic model is based on an ignorant populace that can be easily manipulated.

27 business “leaders,” from two conservative states, with 12 more phone interviews?

There’s a representative sample. Were these small businesses or large? Energy companies out of Houston or manufacturers in San Antonio?

In the bigger picture, business leaders seem to want highly skilled workers with the drive to reeducate as needed and the creativity to envision new efficiencies and work flows as markets and production technologies evolve.

As at-will contract workers, with wages and benefits determined by 3rd world competition.

I don’t blame them for thinking such a reality would make them rich beyond belief. It would. I do wonder why they think that anyone else would find that scenario attractive.

Here is what the conservative British philosopher Michael Oakeshott had to say on this subject in his book The Voice of Liberal Learning:

“[Such things as advanced training]…belong to a world of power and utility, of
exploitation, of social and individual egoism, and of activity, whose meaning
lies outside itself in some trivial result or achievement—and this is not the
world to which a university belongs; it is not the world to which education in
the true sense belongs. It is a very powerful world; it is wealthy, interfering
and well-meaning. But it is not remarkably self-critical; it is apt to mistake
itself for the whole world, and with amiable carelessness it assumes that
whatever does not contribute to its own purposes is somehow errant. A
university needs to beware of the patronage of this world, or it will find that
it has sold its birthright for a mess of pottage… “

Until faculty wrest control from mindless administrators, whose practices are exemplified in 02.15.2012 usmnews.net report, “Cost Per Flight Hour,” they’ll not be able to effectively address views of business and government leaders. They get their information from the public relations juggernaut of colleges and universities which are controlled by the same administrators who control faculty. And administrators will not willingly give up their power.

Chauncey M. DePree, Jr., DBA [BA Philosophy, MS Accounting, DBA Accounting, Ethics, and Logic], Professor, School of Accountancy, College of Business, University of Southern Mississippi

It’s a rather tenuous connection from tax breaks to lower quality education. For one thing education spending has increased considerably over the past several decades. It is not the fault of business leaders that most of that increase has gone to the growth of administrative costs and amenities, rather than to faculty.

 Correction: Universities are producing, for obscene amounts of money, uneducated and indoctrinated twats for large amounts of money.

 Only an idiot wouldn’t want to take advice from Toyota, Honda, BMW, Southwest Airlines, etc., etc.

Alternatively, someone who is perfectly happy fleecing gullible young minds for a relaxing livelihood would not want to actually be measured on their results as the successful companies in those markets are measured each and every day (unless they have a pal in Washington DC, of course).

 Yes, that’s the reason.  Universities are teaching too much “critical thinking”.  Of course, they weren’t teaching any “critical thinking” 20 years ago, so everything was great and companies would hire ignorant people.

Make all the excuses you want.  The reality is we live in a global economy.  There are at least 20-25 other countries producing better educated students.  guess who are getting the jobs?

 You need to look in the mirror and see who provides your livelihood.

 Companies do still train…but you have to have a baseline of info for them to work with.  For example, a company will train an employee who to use a piece of machinery.  They will not train them how to do algebra.  Most jobs require that employees have knowledge in algebra so they can train them on how to use the machinery.

 And here’s Exhibit A

 Says the feudal lord to those they patronize.

Oh, wait, it’s the labor of the serfs that supports both patrons and the patronized.

” guess who are getting the jobs? ”

Those who work for the lowest wages.

In related news, the higher educational system wanted to inform the business leaders that the use of the business model in university systems plus the overtaking of state and federal governments by business interests has contributed toward the rising cost of higher education, its “indifferent quality,” and some other unmentionable things.