A Change Method Better Suited to the U.S. HE Culture

Cliff Adelman’s recommendations are sound and I salute his persistence in keeping the vision in front of us. There is, however, a different approach to accountability that may be more uniquely suited to U.S. higher education and the American culture in which it exists, still largely in isolation from other forms of corporations. Given U.S. HE’s legacy of semi-independence and diversity, there is something to be said as well for a solution that preserves uniqueness while introducing essential elements of accountability. Consider these talking points.

1. For the most part the ways things get done in U.S. HE still reflect the culture of a guild with its attendant values and insular structures that resist change. 2. Attempts at organic change by directly addressing culture, structure, and business rules have been successfully resisted with very little effort on the part of the guild against great effort on the part of the change agent. Given the disproportionate expenditure of resources, the change agents eventually go away or compromise away their core mission. 3. Needed is a very thin point of leverage that will engage the self-interests of the members of the guild to change in the desired direction—an inflection point, if you will. 4. Compensation is just such an inflection point and, perhaps, is the only one given the mentality of the guild’s members that they will go down with the ship rather than change to save it. 5. If compensation is aligned with the desired behaviors, the energies of those compensated will be directed toward reaching compromise, rather than resisting, in refining the value proposition of their work.

Any experienced business person will look at these comments and remark, “. . . and your point!” And the point is that HE’s overseers and regulators must first change themselves before a leveraged system can be engineered. The entire system – the guild and its overseers and regulators – are rabidly opposed to performance-based compensation. They are illogical in asserting that such is unethical when, in fact, it is more ethical than rewarding slackers and hard working high performers equally. The HEA slogged out 12 terminally ambiguous safe harbor tests against compensating enrollment personnel for doing their job; i.e., enrolling. Imagine their position on compensating for learner satisfaction, goal attainment, learning outcomes, behavioral proficiencies, and impact. Executive directors of the Regional’s laugh nervously when I suggest that if documented learning outcomes and continuous improvement are really important to them, they will work with the schools to engineer a system of differential pay for the outcomes they desire. They immediately retreat to the scientifically indefensible position that it is too difficult to control for inputs (it is not).

The entire HE culture, while constructing illogical and unethical means by which compensation is actually increased, turns ghostly pale when you suggest paying for performance across the full range of higher education roles.

Yet, when performance is compensated properly, the attention of all stakeholders is keenly focused on the definitions, metrics, and documentations of performance. In the case of U.S. HE, solutions will be somewhat unique to the institution. We can be sure that the consumers will get a front seat in the planning because revenue, and eventually, margins will be essential elements in allocating funds. The process will be messy and imperfect but the job will get done.

Any takers?

Robert Tucker, President at InterEd, Inc., at 11:40 am EDT on June 5, 2008

No profession voluntarily accepts accountability

Undergraduate education in this country is already fast becoming a bit of a joke, when compared with systems elsewhere. Employers are screaming about mono-lingual graduates with poor writing skills, poor numeracy skills and an inability to think critically. At a time when a Google-enabled world makes finding information easy, but sorting through it hard, we are still teaching students the old-fashioned way: to amass facts, memorize theory and solve (deterministic) problems in formulaic ways. The real question is: do our graduates warrant the high salaries (by global standards) they now command and expect to continue to enjoy? Are multinational (US-origin) employers wrong in rationally seeking cost-effective talent elsewhere?

For all the flaws in their higher-education systems, India and China’s top 5% alone (=115 million) can cause enough dislocation in the West through IT-enabled, offshoring of white-collar jobs. And global companies, given their DNA, cannot be expected to shed tears! Don’t forget that the returns on our pension funds depend on their doing well financially!

US academics need to sit up and take note, or change must be forced upon them. The inflection point (the juncture at which the Asian tail will wag the Western dog) will come MUCH sooner than most Westerners expect, simply because of the lopsided populations of the two regions and the average age of India (25), if not that of aging China, compared with an aging West. Also, don’t expect AARP to devote their electoral/ legislative bargaining power to do anything to come to your rescue or do anything that is long-term in nature. They don’t have to think long-term.

Now, let’s close our eyes and focus for a minute: $250-oil (Goldman Sachs’ prediction), a nearly-two-trillion-dollar estimate for extricating ourselves from two wars, higher food-prices, more foreclosures, impending negative economic growth, budget deficits, national debt, a falling dollar and surging growth in China and India....

And, our academics and their-ilk-turned-administrators say we can pull through with business-mostly-as-usual?? Shame on the PhDs funded by taxpayers!!

CR, at 1:30 pm EDT on June 5, 2008

Take your medicine

Well written jayvee!

Even when patients (students) follow theirdoctor’s (professor’s) orders, they don’t always get well.

All Higher Education graduates are ceremonially dumped out into the chaotic vortex of the world and only then dowe find out who has been faking it.

Even those patients who religiously follow the physical therapy or chemo regimes, maynot regain as much health and well-being as other. The environment exerts blind, impartial judgement.

Didn’t take your pills? Didn’t stop smoking or drinking? Didn’t follow your physical (or other) therapy?

THEN don’t blame the doctor (professor)!

Dr. F. Gump, at 4:15 pm EDT on June 5, 2008

Crushing Higher education by demeaning Faculty

Once again the government is showing its contempt for the professionalism of the Academy. The bulwark of America’s system of higher education is the professoriate.

As one president of a major technological university has aptly stated:"The university is the faculty for the students, supported by the administration.”

If the government wins the oversight sought what is the difference between a kindergarten teacher and a university teacher? {Note I dropped the term professor.}

Ollie, Professor, at 8:45 pm EDT on June 8, 2008