David Birren suggests "that what students are buying is the *opportunity*
to learn, rather than knowledge itself. Academia is nothing other than a
complex system of learning opportunities, replete with many ways of both
limiting access to it and providing entry."
In my view, this sanitizes the academic enterprise. Many people both
within and outside academia who populate this list have remarked how
precious little learning takes place among those groves, especially by the
"customers".
Within the framework of the larger system, the colleges and universities
are a means by which corporations can shape the system's learning agenda
(and reap the research harvest) largely at other peoples' expense. Please
forgive the apparent Marxist bias here, it's hard for me to see the
universities any other way. I agree with David's perception that "higher
education" is principally access to opportunity. The colleges and
universities were originally organized to bring practicing scholars
together with young adults in an environment which promoted "collegial"
habits of scholarship. Alas, that is a truly bygone era.
The rationale, I think, for maintaining and expanding the university
system is that it provides society with a means of regulating
"demonstrated learning" for certification purposes. Access to learning
opportunity - in David's construct, which I take to mean "academic"
learning, or what I prefer to call "scholarship" - has always been
available more cheaply and less stringently than within the universities.
Public libraries come first to mind (the tools of my immigrant generation)
and public forums have always existed. In my youth, they were
congregations in parks and cafeterias. Today they are global (I am
thinking of this list for example) which makes them both richer and more
distractful. I, for one, have found hanging out here for a few months far
more "educational" than 15 semester hours over a two year period in a
university setting which provided me with a "Certificate in Adult
Education".
In this context, David Justice, in LO 1503, lists a number of ways in
which educational institutions have been adapted to a variety of social
needs. His conclusion, that the multiple roles played by social
institutions render isolation of "the customer" difficult, is helpful not
only here, but in considering "total quality management" in general.
Many companies need to be refocused on "the customer" as the reason for
their existence, in order to examine the purposes and the relative
capability of their processes. But I think it requires very rigorous
systems thinking for the management to understand the multiple roles of
the company in the society at large. When viewed in this larger context,
(for example) the imperative to maximize shareholder equity and the
imperative to assure employment are not "either/or" but are complementary
balancing requirements for corporate/social survival.
As usual (and - I must admit for myself - expected), Michael McMaster has
advanced this whole line of thought with his exploration in LO 1527 of the
marketplace model, inspired by the cliche "marketplace of ideas". We need
to be careful when we use the word "marketplace", however, since it has
been expropriated by the field of "economics" and then further distorted
by popularization through reactionary rhetoric. Much of this thread has
reflected puzzlement arising out of a strictly economic interpretation of
"customer" and "market". When Michael describes the marketplace model as
a confluence of cooperation and competition operating simultaneously in
social organization, that fits with my mental model of emergent
institutions (always bearing in mind - as Michael has pointed out before -
that "cooperation" and "competition" are categories of interpretation, not
observable behaviors). Of course, this is a *model*; no marketplace of my
experience has ever been so pure. ...and it's here, I believe, that human
psychology and the dynamics of power enter the equation.
--Jack Hirschfeld Can analysis be worthwhile? Is the theatre really dead? jack@his.com