Crazy U.: Not recognizing that higher education is a business is to be in denial!

Over the last few years, one important buzz-phrase in higher education has been "enrollment management."  There are a few good aspects to it, yes.  But, all the good aspects are largely ignored by the overriding objective of all: maximization of student enrollment.

If student numbers--those enrolled--go up, the institution is happy.  I don't merely mean administrators being happy, but faculty too.  Faculty, true to their (our) parochial interests, see increase in numbers as a wonderful opportunity to offer that rare and special topic that nobody else cares about or, worse, outrightly bizarre courses.  Administrators compete for awards in their worlds, and the faculty-administrative complex is happy.

Except, this is not a happy situation.  Because, we are forgetting the students, aren't we? 

But, students, too, seem to be happy with this--high school continues on, and their adolescence extends well into twenty-something years.  And, of course, academic researchers validate this as "emergent adulthood."  So, if anybody asks questions, well, simply throw that phrase to spin a story that the youth of today are graduating into adulthood along paths and time-frames different from mine, leave alone my grandfather's!

A significant number of students I encounter don't seem to be interested in knowledge at all. Today, one student slept through most of the 100-minute meeting. And it was not as if I was even talking the whole time. Before we took a break midway, I handed their assignments back and, picture this: I am calling out students' names, most of whom I now know anyway. I call out this student's name, and well, he is fast asleep. I joke that perhaps somebody ought to wake him up. A few students sport a nonplussed look. We move on, take that break, resume classes, and this student sleeps through it all.  A few minutes before class ends, he wakes up startled. Looks around (I am watching all these even as I am explaining the dynamic changes in birthrates!) and as class ends, rushes out without collecting his paper. In fact, there has not been a single class over the last four weeks that he has not slept. Not a quick nap, but deep sleep. Well, I can only hope it is not some serious medical issue.  And if it is a medical problem, I hope he is getting appropriate care.

Some students, of course, go on a totally different track--questioning the very idea that education is about knowing.  Last term, one student complained--yes, complained--that he was being forced to take courses in subjects that he didn't care for at all.  No, his grudge was not against linear differential equations, but was about the very heart of the liberal arts--in the humanities and the social sciences!

Across the Atlantic, notes, Spiked, the newly elected leader of the National Union of Students said:

‘I think we should be honest about our priorities’, he said. ‘At the end of the day, the point of the university has changed. If you look at when only five per cent of the population went, that was about knowledge, discovery, pushing boundaries, people talked about the crème de la crème. [Now], it is about social mobility and people changing their lives. The reality is you need that bit of paper [a degree] to get into better jobs with greater earning potential and influence. So we want as many people to get one as possible, at the expense of quality if necessary.’

Wait, don't nod in agreement.  Re-read this.  Did you catch what he said? "we want as many people to get [a degree] as possible, at the expense of quality if necessary.’"  There, if ever we needed a clear articulation on how much education is all about numbers and not about quality, well, hey, thank this brilliant student leader for making it clear.

Spiked comments on this sorry state of education:

It is a remarkably naked assertion of the denigration of education from being about quality (knowledge, reflection, truth) to being about quantity (getting as many young people through as possible in order to improve their ‘earning potential’).

The question we need to ask ourselves is whether college really needs to be for everybody. Why shove it down everybody's throat by making a college degree a requirement for every bloody job there is?

The more we engage in this, the more higher education operates as an out-of-control industry whose only business is taking care of itself.  And, yes, Crazy U is a good metaphor :(