Causality is often not bidirectional. In many cases causality runs in one direction only with changes in A leading to changes in B but not vice versa. China appears to be a case in point. It has been generally assumed by economists that democratic free market economies function more efficiently and therefore generate more wealth than centralized command and control economies. In the 1990s that reasoning was turned on its head and many political scientists assumed that the corollary would also hold; that greater economic prosperity and freer markets would lead to an inevitable transition from a centralized political system to a decentralized democratic one. The quarter century since that view came to prominence has shown that in China at least, market liberalization and greater personal wealth do not lead to democratic reform. When relationships are not simple and dyadic (A->B, B->A) but are the product of many different mechanisms one cannot assume causality runs both ways.
Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academia. Show all posts
Friday, August 25, 2023
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Academic Freedom?
Many of my colleagues have been lamenting the infringement of academic freedom in red states which are passing laws preventing the teaching of subjects related to race and gender.
What is striking but not perhaps surprising is that very few made the same augment about infringement of academic freedom when AB1460, a law mandating the teaching of ethnic studies in the CSU was passed three years ago.
Apparently infringement of academic freedom is only problematic when it's a policy that many of my colleagues don't like but is perfectly fine when its one they support.
It appears that hypocrisy is alive and well on the left as well as on the right.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Gales of Creative Destruction
HBS professor Clayton Christensen has written about disruptive technologies sweeping away incumbents; and that's what many suggest is happening in education at the moment. The Internet has changed the cost of information delivery and the breadth of content to which we now have access. I noted a few weeks ago that we are in an era of ferment, and as Michael Tushman (also at HBS) pointed out, that could mean that technological change either obsoletes or complements prevailing academic technologies - technology here used in its broadest sense.
What makes higher education slightly different from Christensen's model is that there appears, oddly, to be less constraint, particularly in public institutions, than in business (though plenty of inertia). Christensen noted that incumbents were hamstrung by the need to meet the demands of their existing customers who would vote with their feet (not to mention their wallets) if those firms failed to deliver improvements in their current product set. Since their customers were themselves generally pursuing incremental improvements, they weren't interested in more radical, though initially lower performing, alternatives. It was new product categories that were driving suppliers to change, and new entrant suppliers were better able to meet those needs than incumbent suppliers.
Does this model fit education? Not that well, actually, for two reasons. First, what is being asked for hasn't really changed. Students still want what they've always wanted; a good eduction. Whether educators and students share a view on what "a good education" means is another matter, to which I'll return in a moment. The second is that educational institutions, particularly those that are state assisted, can afford, ironically, to be less responsive to demand than business firms, first because they are accountable to tax payers who are generally disinterested in education (except when the bill falls due), as well as to fee paying students, and second because students, for the moment, really have no where else to go. Of course that's changing, but in the mean time, state assisted institutions of higher education are less constrained than Christensen's disk drive makers.
This means schools are in a position to undertake bold and potentially risky new experiments, something that commercial organizations generally find it hard to do; or they could do nothing. If they take the latter option, the future will shape them rather than the other way round.
What seems evident in the debate over the future of higher education is a conspicuous lack of clarity as to what higher education is actually supposed to be doing. Universities fulfill three roles; they create new knowledge, they pass current knowledge on to students (often toward somewhat unspecified ends) and they confer credentials.
While we take for granted that this is what universities do, it is not the only institutional arrangement by which these tasks might be achieved in society. Nor need they necessarily all be done by a single kind of institution: the current model is up for grabs. Before the printing press, universities, and in particular the lecture, were a key element of information transmission from those with knowledge to whose who needed it. (It's worth remembering however, that apprenticeship was another means by which knowledge was transmitted).
The in-person lecture has persisted despite the fact that technology has for some time offered alternatives; the Open University in Britain started broadcasting lectures in the early 1960s, and today the YouTube video has the potential could make university lecturing a thing of the past. Local universities may be condemned to the same fate as repertory theater, overwhelmed by the Hollywood star system, huge production budgets, and the most talented and photogenic silver screen personalities. Clearly, if lecturing was what made an for a quality education, all but a few brand name institution are doomed.
But that's not what I believe university should be; and here's where my views as an educator and those of my students may differ. I want everyone to come out of their college experience as independent thinkers, as motivated, curious learners. But what many students want, and for good reason, is the piece of paper that will get them the higher paying job that in turn will allow them to pay back their oppressive student loans. The return on investment to careful inquisitive thinking may be years down the road, while a set of tools and a marketable skill have big near-term returns.
Which brings me finally to the question of what society more broadly wants from higher education. I disagree with Margaret Thatcher's free market notion that 'there is no such thing as society'. We have ample evidence, for example in the 2008 financial crisis, that free markets don't always generate outcomes that are broadly beneficial. As a society, we collectively agree on certain things we would like to see that may not be outcomes the free market would generate, and enact laws to make those things a reality. We allocate resources to provide public goods like a universal mail service that the market under-provides. We have for a long time accepted as a society we should provide resources to do the fundamental research that the market does not provide.The question we are now dealing with is how much should education, the 'forming of young minds' be left to the market and how much should it be something we provide collectively as a society.
Left to the market we will likely get bifurcation into a small number of elite institutions with well known brands like Harvard, Stanford and Yale, and then a MOOC based model that looks a little like the University of Phoenix. The elite schools will continue to provide the highly personal service to very wealthy families, the "wealth management" end of the business to use a banking analogy. These not so fortunate, will get a much cheaper but highly standardized mass produced product with off-shore call centers, and not a person in sight. I'm exaggerating somewhat but the general point I think is sound.
Two market segments, a handful of highly differentiated, expensive providers, and the cost leaders. It's likely that the elite schools, while not necessarily getting into the cost leadership segment directly—not because they couldn't, but because of the potential impact on their brand—will nevertheless want to monopolize the supply of content to those public institutions or private firms that do cater to the 'mass market'. The educational outcomes, the student 'product' that emerges from each of these segments will be very different.
The question that we collectively need to consider is will this market driven outcome best serve our cultural and economic needs in the longer term? Do we want higher education to go the same way as retail banking? The choices were make now are important because once the current institutions are dismantled, and the young academic they currently train are no longer produced, putting the system back together will be much harder than taking it apart.
What makes higher education slightly different from Christensen's model is that there appears, oddly, to be less constraint, particularly in public institutions, than in business (though plenty of inertia). Christensen noted that incumbents were hamstrung by the need to meet the demands of their existing customers who would vote with their feet (not to mention their wallets) if those firms failed to deliver improvements in their current product set. Since their customers were themselves generally pursuing incremental improvements, they weren't interested in more radical, though initially lower performing, alternatives. It was new product categories that were driving suppliers to change, and new entrant suppliers were better able to meet those needs than incumbent suppliers.
Does this model fit education? Not that well, actually, for two reasons. First, what is being asked for hasn't really changed. Students still want what they've always wanted; a good eduction. Whether educators and students share a view on what "a good education" means is another matter, to which I'll return in a moment. The second is that educational institutions, particularly those that are state assisted, can afford, ironically, to be less responsive to demand than business firms, first because they are accountable to tax payers who are generally disinterested in education (except when the bill falls due), as well as to fee paying students, and second because students, for the moment, really have no where else to go. Of course that's changing, but in the mean time, state assisted institutions of higher education are less constrained than Christensen's disk drive makers.
This means schools are in a position to undertake bold and potentially risky new experiments, something that commercial organizations generally find it hard to do; or they could do nothing. If they take the latter option, the future will shape them rather than the other way round.
What seems evident in the debate over the future of higher education is a conspicuous lack of clarity as to what higher education is actually supposed to be doing. Universities fulfill three roles; they create new knowledge, they pass current knowledge on to students (often toward somewhat unspecified ends) and they confer credentials.
While we take for granted that this is what universities do, it is not the only institutional arrangement by which these tasks might be achieved in society. Nor need they necessarily all be done by a single kind of institution: the current model is up for grabs. Before the printing press, universities, and in particular the lecture, were a key element of information transmission from those with knowledge to whose who needed it. (It's worth remembering however, that apprenticeship was another means by which knowledge was transmitted).
The in-person lecture has persisted despite the fact that technology has for some time offered alternatives; the Open University in Britain started broadcasting lectures in the early 1960s, and today the YouTube video has the potential could make university lecturing a thing of the past. Local universities may be condemned to the same fate as repertory theater, overwhelmed by the Hollywood star system, huge production budgets, and the most talented and photogenic silver screen personalities. Clearly, if lecturing was what made an for a quality education, all but a few brand name institution are doomed.
But that's not what I believe university should be; and here's where my views as an educator and those of my students may differ. I want everyone to come out of their college experience as independent thinkers, as motivated, curious learners. But what many students want, and for good reason, is the piece of paper that will get them the higher paying job that in turn will allow them to pay back their oppressive student loans. The return on investment to careful inquisitive thinking may be years down the road, while a set of tools and a marketable skill have big near-term returns.
Which brings me finally to the question of what society more broadly wants from higher education. I disagree with Margaret Thatcher's free market notion that 'there is no such thing as society'. We have ample evidence, for example in the 2008 financial crisis, that free markets don't always generate outcomes that are broadly beneficial. As a society, we collectively agree on certain things we would like to see that may not be outcomes the free market would generate, and enact laws to make those things a reality. We allocate resources to provide public goods like a universal mail service that the market under-provides. We have for a long time accepted as a society we should provide resources to do the fundamental research that the market does not provide.The question we are now dealing with is how much should education, the 'forming of young minds' be left to the market and how much should it be something we provide collectively as a society.
Left to the market we will likely get bifurcation into a small number of elite institutions with well known brands like Harvard, Stanford and Yale, and then a MOOC based model that looks a little like the University of Phoenix. The elite schools will continue to provide the highly personal service to very wealthy families, the "wealth management" end of the business to use a banking analogy. These not so fortunate, will get a much cheaper but highly standardized mass produced product with off-shore call centers, and not a person in sight. I'm exaggerating somewhat but the general point I think is sound.
Two market segments, a handful of highly differentiated, expensive providers, and the cost leaders. It's likely that the elite schools, while not necessarily getting into the cost leadership segment directly—not because they couldn't, but because of the potential impact on their brand—will nevertheless want to monopolize the supply of content to those public institutions or private firms that do cater to the 'mass market'. The educational outcomes, the student 'product' that emerges from each of these segments will be very different.
The question that we collectively need to consider is will this market driven outcome best serve our cultural and economic needs in the longer term? Do we want higher education to go the same way as retail banking? The choices were make now are important because once the current institutions are dismantled, and the young academic they currently train are no longer produced, putting the system back together will be much harder than taking it apart.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Innovation in education
Michael Tushman has written about the era of ferment, that period of time just after a major technological change that leads to paradigm shift. That's exactly where higher education is today. The internet has made possible a wide variety of alternatives to the traditional classroom model but it will take several years, perhaps a generation, before we see clear 'winners' emerging and a new standard or paradigm for higher-ed.
Higher education, to use Michael Porter's five forces framework, has been content to relax behind huge entry barriers; the high cost of getting a PhD and the limited supply of new faculty, not to mention the issue of brand, reputation and industry self-accreditation makes it hard if not impossible for for new entrants. When was the last time you heard of a new conventional brick and mortar university being established? And that's supported fairly high prices, regardless of whether the cost is borne by the student, the taxpayer, or some combination of both.
The threat comes not from new entrants using the existing model but from substitution. Potential competitors are not going to be institutions full of professors with PhDs and doctoral candidates/TAs but internet start-ups coming from the technology space, who are buying the content they need and innovating the delivery system.
Solutions like Udacity may only impart 50% as much knowledge as traditional universities; but their ability to potentially do so for orders of magnitude lower cost (and to some extent commensurately lower prices to consumers of education) may not be something current educators like, but may meet both a market need and a broader societal one too.
Higher education, to use Michael Porter's five forces framework, has been content to relax behind huge entry barriers; the high cost of getting a PhD and the limited supply of new faculty, not to mention the issue of brand, reputation and industry self-accreditation makes it hard if not impossible for for new entrants. When was the last time you heard of a new conventional brick and mortar university being established? And that's supported fairly high prices, regardless of whether the cost is borne by the student, the taxpayer, or some combination of both.
The threat comes not from new entrants using the existing model but from substitution. Potential competitors are not going to be institutions full of professors with PhDs and doctoral candidates/TAs but internet start-ups coming from the technology space, who are buying the content they need and innovating the delivery system.
Solutions like Udacity may only impart 50% as much knowledge as traditional universities; but their ability to potentially do so for orders of magnitude lower cost (and to some extent commensurately lower prices to consumers of education) may not be something current educators like, but may meet both a market need and a broader societal one too.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Education and banking
When I was 15 my grandmother decided it was time I had a bank account. But in order to accomplish this, I had to put on a suit and tie and be interviewed by manager of the local branch of the Midland Bank to see if I was a suitable customer for one the the UK's most august institutions.In the 1960s and 70s one had a personal relationship with the branch manager.
Fast forward 40 years. Now it's off-share call centres, internet self service banking, telephone menu systems and literally no way to talk to the local branch manager on the phone; HSBC which bought Midland in the 1990s publishes only a central toll free number.
Unless that is, you are wealthy. If you're part of the 1% then you have a personal wealth manager,and tailored personal service.
Education is in danger to going the same way. John Henessy, Stanford's president has said:
“while the gold standard of small in-person classes led by great instructors...”
“…the gold standard is, by its nature, expensive. So it is, in my mind, the ideal educational opportunity for the really best students for the institutions
that can afford to provide that together with families. But it can’t be the entire solution given the cost of education in the U.S.”
“As a country we are simply trying to support too many universities. Nationally we may not be able to afford as many research institutions going forward.”
That looks to me like a two tier solution; small classes for the super rich, and MOOCs for everyone else.
That's not how I envision widespread access to quality higher education.
Fast forward 40 years. Now it's off-share call centres, internet self service banking, telephone menu systems and literally no way to talk to the local branch manager on the phone; HSBC which bought Midland in the 1990s publishes only a central toll free number.
Unless that is, you are wealthy. If you're part of the 1% then you have a personal wealth manager,and tailored personal service.
Education is in danger to going the same way. John Henessy, Stanford's president has said:
“while the gold standard of small in-person classes led by great instructors...”
“…the gold standard is, by its nature, expensive. So it is, in my mind, the ideal educational opportunity for the really best students for the institutions
that can afford to provide that together with families. But it can’t be the entire solution given the cost of education in the U.S.”
“As a country we are simply trying to support too many universities. Nationally we may not be able to afford as many research institutions going forward.”
That looks to me like a two tier solution; small classes for the super rich, and MOOCs for everyone else.
That's not how I envision widespread access to quality higher education.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
edX's Innovative Business Model (Analogy #2)
In this Chronicle of Higher Ed piece, Anant Agarwal explained the two flavors of edX' business model. In the 'supported' model the client institutions pays $250k up front and then 30% of all student fees for the course over that amount. In the second, the 'self-service' model the upfront fee is $50k with the client institution surrendering 50% of all student fees beyond that.
Imagine that model in the context of the textbook publishing industry.
McGraw Hill owns the rights to a well know text such as Hill & Jones "Strategic Management". It decides to sell "Strategic Management" to universities liek SJSU. It charges half the initial cost of developing the book (any one-time fees to author, focus groups, reviewers stipends, any other fixed fees to copy editors, etc) and then takes 30% of gross sales thereafter. Or on a chapter by chapter basis, charging 10% of the books development cost, and then taking 50% of grow sales for each chapter used.
Now that's a deal most publishing companies would love to get.
Imagine that model in the context of the textbook publishing industry.
McGraw Hill owns the rights to a well know text such as Hill & Jones "Strategic Management". It decides to sell "Strategic Management" to universities liek SJSU. It charges half the initial cost of developing the book (any one-time fees to author, focus groups, reviewers stipends, any other fixed fees to copy editors, etc) and then takes 30% of gross sales thereafter. Or on a chapter by chapter basis, charging 10% of the books development cost, and then taking 50% of grow sales for each chapter used.
Now that's a deal most publishing companies would love to get.
edX's Innovative Business Model (Analogy #1)
In this Chronicle of Higher Ed piece, Anant Agarwal explained the two flavors of edX' business model. In the 'supported' model the client institutions pays $250k up front and then 30% of all student fees for the course over that amount. In the second, the 'self-service' model the upfront fee is $50k with the client institution surrendering 50% of all student fees beyond that.
Imagine that model in the context of the music industry.
EMI owns the rights to a well know band like Pink Floyd. It decides to sell "Dark Side of the Moon" (1973) to stores like Amazon or WalMart. It charges them half the initial cost of making the album (cost of the studio time, fixed fees to the engineers and producers, etc) and then takes 30% of gross sales thereafter. Or on a track by track basis, charging 10% of the album's initial recording cost, and then taking 50% of grow sales for each track sold.
Now that's a deal most recording companies would love to get.
Imagine that model in the context of the music industry.
EMI owns the rights to a well know band like Pink Floyd. It decides to sell "Dark Side of the Moon" (1973) to stores like Amazon or WalMart. It charges them half the initial cost of making the album (cost of the studio time, fixed fees to the engineers and producers, etc) and then takes 30% of gross sales thereafter. Or on a track by track basis, charging 10% of the album's initial recording cost, and then taking 50% of grow sales for each track sold.
Now that's a deal most recording companies would love to get.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Relvance?
By chance I met Mike Parker, ex-CEO of both BNFL and Dow Chemicals. He asked what I was doing in Montreal. I told him I was there for the Academy of Management meeting. "What's that?" he asked. A timely reminder of how much we appear to matter to the organizations we study.
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