College Education as Placebo - Part 2
I posted earlier about College Education and the Placebo Effect dealing with college education in India.
Recently Peter Drucker’s passing generated commentary on his life and work. I found his views on American college education, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal quite interesting. Steve Forbes writes in his “Tribute to Drucker” (emphasis mine)
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| Mr. Drucker also told us to expect enormous changes that will come in higher education, thanks to the rise of satellites and the Internet. “Thirty years from now big universities will be relics. Universities won’t survive. It is as large a change as when we first got the printed book.” He believed “High school graduates should work for at least five years before going on to college.” It will be news to most college presidents and a lot of alumni that “higher education is in deep crisis. Colleges won’t survive as residential institutions. Today’s buildings are hopelessly unsuited and totally unneeded.” All this from a life-long academic. |
Interesting. I agree with Mr. Drucker. It is not my case that college education is worthless; what I contend is that the cost/benefit has gone way out of whack, and serious rethinking is needed. Much the same benefits of college education can be achieved at much lower cost. The crisis will be here soon enough, because college is simply becoming more and more unaffordable. The fact that “cost consciousness” sounds so out of place in the exalted world of academia by itself indicates the nature of the problem.
It is not merely cost control either. The system itself has to be rethought. That is where Mr. Drucker’s observation “High school graduates should work for at least five years before going on to college.” makes so much sense. The WSJ article also says
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| How higher education is managed did not impress Mr. Drucker; but what did is our continuing education system, whether in community colleges or by computers. Also: “Our most important education system is in the employees’ own organization.” That is where most Americans learn the most. |
This is a fundamental insight: the most important education system is the employee’s own organization. The two insights can be combined: kids entering the workforce right after high school, and the most important education system being the employee’s own organization, together point towards the future.
As in so many things, Peter Drucker is so far sighted. The world will miss him.