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Readers weigh in on treating education as a business
Unlike businesses, schools don't have total control over the shaping of their 'products,' some readers note
Although education could benefit from some of the principles found in the business world, in the end, the two are fundamentally different in terms of how they measure success, most readers agreed.
In the recent article “Viewpoint: Why education is not like business,” contributing author Seth Rosenblatt wrote that, although there is a popular school of thought that says government—including public education—should be run more like a business, “government institutions exist for a different purpose than businesses, and they should operate by a different set of rules.”
This article prompted a lot of debate among eSchool News readers. While many readers argued that schools could learn a lot from business, a majority agreed with the premise that businesses and schools have fundamentally different missions and characteristics and therefore should not be compared.
Here’s what our readers had to say [edited for brevity]:
Why not learn from business?
“Business and education go hand in hand,” stated Pearcen. “Both are driven by a mission, responsible to the shareholders (community and parents, students), and should be able to adapt to a changing world. In a business, employees are hired based off of value they can bring into your company. A system engineer will cost you a hefty sum, a janitor, not so much. So why can’t most government schools, in general, pay more or less based on need? For instance, a school running on the business approach hires a 1st-year math teacher for $60K and a 10th-year English teacher for $50K. The business knew it was harder to acquire a math teacher more so than the English, so they paid more. However, our current teacher pay scale is nearly the same. Your worth is only based off of years of service, and if you have a master’s or doctorate [degree], and not the value you can bring.
“Citizens are revolting against schools and government today because they’re paying more and are getting less. The same citizens go into work and are expected to generate data-driven results, and are happy to lose pay, benefits, and retirement, if they can just keep their job. Those people are angry at seeing teachers on TV complain and protest a pay freeze or have to contribute to their awesome medical or retirement package. It kills them when they hear, ‘If you care about your kids’ future, you’ll give us a raise.’”
For more school reform news:
ED to unions, districts: Can’t we all just get along?
“I think these are all reasons why schools should be managed as a business by business people rather than institutionalized educators,” said gramola. “If you accept the premise that our product is ‘producing educated students who will be successful in life,’ then we are failing miserably. Our marketing plan is way out of touch with the real world. Our curriculum is 30 years past usefulness. We are boring children and teaching useless information that the real world Googles. A fresh, innovative business approach is what we need to produce outstanding ‘products.’”
2 Responses to Readers weigh in on treating education as a business
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corinnegregory
March 2, 2011 at 2:59 pm
In any organization, when 30-50% of your product is failing or has major deficits, there IS a problem with your process, your organization, or your materials.
Whether schools should be RUN as a business or not is really not the point. The point is they need to THINK more like businesses and apply some of the same approaches that businesses do.
For example, can you imagine ANY other business in the country that comes equipped with a built-in 30% failure rate? The Board of Directors would be screaming and funding would be yanked. Yet, that’s exactly what our schools have and, instead of demands for process-improvement, they continue to ask for (and generaly receive) more and and more money.
We never really look at what happens with that money, either, and “improvements in efficiency” are rarely considered. Most businesses welcome the opportunity to increase value and decrease overhead; our schools, too frequently, work the other way.
Sadly, the “product” they are working with and turning out are our children.
I wrote an entire piece on this topic not too long ago and it’s resonated strongly with its readers. For more on this, feel free to visit http://socialsmarts.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/what-if-schools-were-run-like-a-business/
- Corinne Gregory
http://www.corinnegregory.com
http://www.socialsmarts.com
corinnegregory
March 2, 2011 at 2:59 pm
In any organization, when 30-50% of your product is failing or has major deficits, there IS a problem with your process, your organization, or your materials.
Whether schools should be RUN as a business or not is really not the point. The point is they need to THINK more like businesses and apply some of the same approaches that businesses do.
For example, can you imagine ANY other business in the country that comes equipped with a built-in 30% failure rate? The Board of Directors would be screaming and funding would be yanked. Yet, that’s exactly what our schools have and, instead of demands for process-improvement, they continue to ask for (and generaly receive) more and and more money.
We never really look at what happens with that money, either, and “improvements in efficiency” are rarely considered. Most businesses welcome the opportunity to increase value and decrease overhead; our schools, too frequently, work the other way.
Sadly, the “product” they are working with and turning out are our children.
I wrote an entire piece on this topic not too long ago and it’s resonated strongly with its readers. For more on this, feel free to visit http://socialsmarts.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/what-if-schools-were-run-like-a-business/
- Corinne Gregory
http://www.corinnegregory.com
http://www.socialsmarts.com
jvmead
March 3, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Whenever I read about treating education as a business I am struck by two philosophical viewpoints that appear on their face to conflict. Teachers are socialized to a caring philosophy whilst administrators and policy makers hold a business philosophy set of ethics. It is difficult to reconcile these points hence the conflicting debate where both sides don’t see value in the opposing philosophy.
Both philosophies view and deal differently with failure and sadly in education there is plenty of failure to go round. I would suggest a constructive way to go forward is to look carefully at how other professions deal with failure. For example, the medical profession accepts that some patients die and yet manage to evaluate doctors and judge whether the process or the individual was at fault. Education is still a long way for providing a convincing narrative that accepts some failure in either the individual or the process and can meaningfully assign fault. In the caring philosophy failure is difficult to accept or acknowledge. In the education administrative philosophy there are poor tools available to identify failure.
It seems to me that we need to blend some of the two opposing viewpoints and articulate them clearly so that the general public and those involved in education share a common language and educational philosophy. Clearly some business processes do have a place in education. Current educational practices do not give good returns on investment by the general public. There is much merit in the caring philosophy that the majority of teachers espouse. The danger of caring lies in how the ethic becomes a goal in itself and displaces the goal of doing the best we can for individual students as they go on into the world. It is not clear to me that current educational institutions do very well in providing an education that helps students grow and flourish in the world.
Jim Mead
JVMead Consulting
jvmead@cox.net
jvmead
March 3, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Whenever I read about treating education as a business I am struck by two philosophical viewpoints that appear on their face to conflict. Teachers are socialized to a caring philosophy whilst administrators and policy makers hold a business philosophy set of ethics. It is difficult to reconcile these points hence the conflicting debate where both sides don’t see value in the opposing philosophy.
Both philosophies view and deal differently with failure and sadly in education there is plenty of failure to go round. I would suggest a constructive way to go forward is to look carefully at how other professions deal with failure. For example, the medical profession accepts that some patients die and yet manage to evaluate doctors and judge whether the process or the individual was at fault. Education is still a long way for providing a convincing narrative that accepts some failure in either the individual or the process and can meaningfully assign fault. In the caring philosophy failure is difficult to accept or acknowledge. In the education administrative philosophy there are poor tools available to identify failure.
It seems to me that we need to blend some of the two opposing viewpoints and articulate them clearly so that the general public and those involved in education share a common language and educational philosophy. Clearly some business processes do have a place in education. Current educational practices do not give good returns on investment by the general public. There is much merit in the caring philosophy that the majority of teachers espouse. The danger of caring lies in how the ethic becomes a goal in itself and displaces the goal of doing the best we can for individual students as they go on into the world. It is not clear to me that current educational institutions do very well in providing an education that helps students grow and flourish in the world.
Jim Mead
JVMead Consulting
jvmead@cox.net