Essentially everyone in higher education would say – and brag- that we provide a social good. We are, however, also quite fond of telling society that we know what it needs better than it does… And we then say that we already are doing what needs to be done quite effectively, and that everyone should just trust us…
In general, however, there is little actual data to show how well we achieve the desired learning outcomes. Where data exists, more often than not they seriously call into question the effectiveness of our approaches.
I imagine that if Drucker were to look at this situation, he would warn us that unless we can demonstrate that we are in fact doing things that society needs as we move into globalization, we risk suffering some of those political and financial outcomes that he had envisaged only for aberrant corporations…
In much of our field for profit is synonymous with bad, non-profit and school district is synonymous with good. Yet in practice there is wide variance in quality within all three sectors and the highest performing ventures across all three sectors have much more in common with each other than they do with their low-performing peers. In other words, tax status doesn’t necessarily tell us much. And to the extent this is ideological, anyone arguing that for-profit ventures shouldn’t be involved in education has no idea how school districts operate or procure a variety of goods and services…
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