Buying Curricula

Ever thought that colleges were missing a fundamental text or course when you looked at what they taught? Ever tried to convince them to add your pet project? Well, here's some advice: donate a million dollars and try again.

This piece (hat tip: Paul Krugman) discusses the recent actions of a charitable arm of BB&T banking corp. I don't know the full story, but is sounds like they essentially exchanged considerable amounts of money for promises from various colleges to teach Ayn Rand books. Maybe I have too much faith in humanity, but I have a hard time believing that it could be this simple. How could any college possibly justify such an outlandishly egregious breach of ethics?

The article says that colleges have started tailoring grant requests to the organization by mentioning Ayn Rand, so it hardly seems that this is one evil corporation trying to influence some financially-strapped colleges. Is this really where the fundraising race will lead -- colleges putting their curricula up for sale?

More on Business-Style Management of Education

I offered some thoughts the other day about business-think in schools, and I noticed this post by Diane Ravitch in the blog she shares with Deborah Meier on EdWeek. It's extremely thoughtful, quite short, and very worthwhile reading.

I share her aggravation over the notion that only people who are not involved with schools are able to fix them and that running schools like businesses is the magic bullet. Not that outsiders and business practices can't offer some valuable insight, but I hardly think that they offer all the answers.

The Irony of Business Intervention in Education

One of the most noticeable trends in education over the past 5-10 years or so has been the increasing role of business-think in schools. People from the business world have become involved in schools and education policy in a myriad of ways: from businessman superintendents (e.g. in NYC and Pittsburgh) to for-profit schools to supplemental educational services to accountability to performance pay, school choice, and many others. As with any trend in governance, the business perspective has brought both good and bad to education.

As a crass generalization, people who argue that schools should be run more like businesses tend to also argue that schools are wasteful and inefficient, that the market should play a larger role in education, and that success and failure can be measured.

The irony is that if schools were run just like the private sector, the changes would infuriate many proponents of business-think. More specifically, think about spending patterns.

Think of the differences between walking into, say, a law firm vs. walking into a typical public school. Which one has a ridiculously expensive conference table? Which one pays for employees to stay in upscale hotels and eat fancy meals? Which one gives employees expense accounts?

It's widely expected that schools (and pretty much all public organizations, for that matter) are supposed to forgo luxury items, make do with second-hand goods, and generally sacrifice and cut corners at every turn. And that's fine in a lot of ways, but it's something that businesspeople tend to forget. If schools were run more like businesses, I find it hard to believe they'd be any more thrifty. If schools were truly run like businesses I think a lot of current critics would be red-faced with anger over their wasted tax dollars. In short: be careful what you wish for.