In a meeting on campus the other day, someone said to me: “The college is a business.”
I responded: “No, it’s not. There might be business done in the college, but it is an institution of higher education.”
I know that many in this state — and perhaps around the country — are trying to sell this idea. Our current chancellor is from the private sector, for example. The University System of Georgia currently has a “customer service” initiative going on, and we occasionally get emails about how to make the university experience more friendly to our “customers.”
This is dangerous and, frankly, nauseating.
Business — at least how I see it practiced in the US — is all about closing off possibilities; it’s about drawing lines, securing boundaries. It’s about closed systems, elite hegemonies, keeping things status quo; business de-emphasizes the human in favor of the machine. Education is the opposite: it wants to open up possibilities. It’s about teaching students that they have choice and using their critical capacities in exercising that choice. It’s about being the best human beings that we can. These seem to be opposite goals.
The business folks wear the ties and get things done. Their main goal is money and the power that comes along with it. This is not the same for educators. If these were our goals, none of us would have chosen education as a career path.
Higher education is not a business. It is not. I will not fall for this myth, neither should anyone else.
Nice points! When I answered the call to the ministry, it was vitally important that there be a line drawn between business and church. Just as you stated, “Business is done there but..” Culturally, we are subjected everyday to people who choose to corrupt institutions in order to obtain a buck. Business is not a bad thing, but I follow the logic of rendering to Ceaser what is Ceasers and keeping intact the integrity of the church, college, or whatever institution that has a higher calling than money. Money isn’t an evil but it does mightily contribute to the formation of it.
I can see how business gets a bad name, especially when deals go south and threaten to sink economies.
However, the high school system, based on the assembly-line, and the University system, based on the guilds of the Middle Ages, are both rooted in business systems. So say that education is not a business very much misses much of its history – not to mention advancements in knowledge and innovation that come from the business sector.
Whether or not business cuts off possibilities or enhances them is debatable. Just look at Twitter, Facebook, Google, or Apple. All businesses pushing the envelop that are changing the face of education.
I was an educator – a high school Latin teacher – who saw first hand how well a school can run when it is run like a business.
I know it seems to make sense in a country where the corporation is king to run everything that way. Maybe you’re right; most of the bureaucrats and politicians in my state seem to agree. I would argue that the companies you mention are atypical of corporate America, however.