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Guest Column                                                            

Donald Vanover
Stop applying 'business model'
to education


By DONALD VANOVER

I read with dismay the Illinois Issues article (May 1992) on Arthur F. Quern, chairman of the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE). His observations led me to conclude that the chair is willing to use his office to coerce leaders of higher education to accept his views. This concern was borne out when the chair recently threatened to seek authority from the General Assembly to impose his views of efficiency on higher education. His efforts to force his viewpoints upon the presidents of our universities compels me to speak out against the business model he is attempting to impose. Before the legislature acts, I should hope it will consult other voices about the nature of higher education and seek other, more viable options for educational change.

Based on the business model, his view of efficiency encapsulates the entire problem, which is an incomplete understanding of higher education. When he says low enrollment programs are "inefficient and expensive," he is defining them according to business model terms, which are themselves inappropriate for higher education.

Labor relations at Sangamon State University, for example, is a low enrollment program. But is it "inefficient and expensive"? If one looks at the long term and considers that labor relations is emerging as one of the largest, most demanding, most damaging battlefields facing this country, one might consider having people prepared to deal with it in a reasonable manner to be anything but "inefficient and expensive."

The same can be said of foreign languages. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some decisionmakers created turmoil by attempting to eliminate foreign language programs with low enrollment. Fortunately, those who maintained that the world had a need for foreign language majors, and would have an even larger need in the future, prevailed. In today's competitive international environment, foreign languages have taken on a very significant role in economic development. So it clearly would not have been "efficient" in the long run to eliminate foreign language programs two decades ago.

Anyone using numbers as the basis for determining efficiency in higher education must be challenged.

Limited by his business model constraints, Quern does not understand that higher education's direct costs are returned indirectly, and that the returns are difficult to measure. For example, a university develops an engineer. That engineer assists in the building of a bridge. People, products and commodities flow over that bridge at lower costs than an alternate route.

Money is saved each time, for years. The return is astronomical, but the return is spread over millions of people a little bit at a time. It is, nevertheless, a return on the taxpayers' investment. And so it is with a grade school teacher. She or he teaches a student to read. That student learns through reading, goes to college, succeeds and becomes an engineer. The process repeats itself and the returns magnify. Quern talks of accountability, but he has failed to show how business model accountability concepts will measure educational results.

Quern's talk of possibly reducing teacher education programs from eleven to four campuses concerns me in two ways. First, he does not appear to understand that accessibility has been first and foremost the reason taxpayers have historically supported higher education.

They wanted it available for their children and their friends' children. They could not afford to send them to England or the East Coast. This factor is no less true today than it was then. Many parents cannot afford to send their children across the state. Accessibility is an expense, and parents recognize it as a necessary expense to obtain the services their children need. Very few people would question the expense of the GI Bill following World War II because the returns have been so great. Society recognized that the value of higher education would increase with an increase in accessibility. So they invested even though the business model did not apply according to standard business model accountability principles.

Why does the business model not apply? The returns cannot be measured directly. Simply put, the grade school teacher referred to earlier may not have been able to become a grade school teacher if he or she had to travel across the state. The student who learned to read may not have become an engineer. The old statement that "anyone who wants to go to college can" is not true, but the state can bring it closer to reality by maintaining or increasing accessibility rather than diminishing it. Quern's proposal is taking us in the opposite direction. In today's economic situation with so many citizens' security threatened and so many unemployed, applying the business model to post-secondary education appears especially foolhardy. In essence, short-term thinking creates more problems than it solves.

The second concern is his view of decisionmaking. Speaking again of teacher education programs, Quern says that a "state commission or IBHE might decide that only four or five are needed [instead of eleven] and designate which universities might offer them," but that

10/February 1993/Illinois Issues


he would "prefer" that the universities decide among themselves. His use of "prefer" suggests authoritarianism, which is dangerous to the welfare of higher education. All people in the state should be alarmed that the IBHE would even think of dictating the mission of individual universities. Freedom to develop and explore would be destroyed, and higher education in Illinois would reflect the views of a few individuals who may not have the wherewithal, knowledge and wisdom to know. The nature of higher education is too valuable to be determined by a few people in centralized positions, regardless of their capabilities or position.

To summarize, the efficiencies that Quern is advocating will come at high cost. He will attempt to impose upon higher education the business model, a model that has consistently rewarded unethical behavior and short-term thinking, a model that has inflicted immense pain in the name of efficiency, a model that counts things above people, a model that utilizes its power for the aggrandizement of the individual, a model that espouses competition over cooperation, and a model that sometimes crushes the individual for the sake of efficiency. The business model will reduce higher education to teaching what is perceived as "needed" needed by the business model. Literature, history, philosophy, music and art will have an even lower priority than they currently have because they will be judged by low enrollments, inefficiency, ineffectiveness and no immediately tangible results. The inefficiencies in higher education as measured by the business model are symptoms, not problems.

Even though it may not appear so, I am a strong advocate of the business model in its place, but its place is not in education or government. Those who try to impose it do not distinguish between the qualitative and the quantitative. Higher education is not a business, and it cannot be judged on the same basis as business. The chairman of the IBHE should utilize the concepts of the business model sparingly, especially as it relates to structure, power and control.

Donald Vanover is a professor of management at Sangamon State University, Springfield.

February 1993/Illinois Issues/11


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