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” .. like getting an adequate tax base.”

The writer is well-known for his advocacy of public higher education and financial pressures brought about by Medicaid and Medicare.

http://www.senate.gov/~finance/he.../testimony/2005test/120506jdtest.pdf

However, it is one thing to be at a Public Ivy.

It is quite another to be at Average Public College, the high-cost questionable marketing involved by those colleges, and the outcomes.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1...5602.html?mod=rss_most_emailed_month

Michigan has lost more than a million high-paying industrial jobs in the last 20 years. Jobs that many in academia seem to enjoy sneering at.

Yet, higher education behaves like nothing has changed. Declining enrollments? Rising demands for relevance? Low GRE scores? Wha?

Well — the world has changed. Either change with it — or get rolled over.

B.D., at 8:35 am EDT on September 28, 2007

Plenty of fat to trim

A commenter wrote...."The colleges and universities are no longer trimming fat—they are cutting flesh and bone, cutting off fingers and toes.”

This has not been my experience at any of the state universities where I have worked. When financial times get tough schools need to look at the non-teaching areas of their universities and start cutting. How much money is wasted on bringing in expensive speakers for which faculty must offer “extra credit” to get students to attend?

How much money and time is wasted on forcing employees to attend diversity seminars and paying salaries to “diversity coordinators” and “diversity consultants"?

Laura, at 11:00 am EDT on September 28, 2007

“Yet, higher education behaves like nothing has changed. Declining enrollments? Rising demands for relevance? Low GRE scores? Wha?”

how do you know that higher education is behaving like nothing has changed? because you want to believe it?

i can tell you for a fact that our enrollments are not declining at my university. we’ve been steadily growing and our average GPA for incoming freshmen is now over 3.5 this year. i think that’s pretty incredible for a public institution of 23,000+ and for the university that is amongst the lowest funded in Michigan.

our institution has been making drastic cuts across the board. we have cut a program that had limited enrollment, yet was one of the only options in the state for this program; we have cut benefits that faculty and staff receive; our health care costs have risen; and, tuition has been raised, unfortunately. faculty workload decisions are being made that are a step backwards. decisions are being made based on money instead of the soundness of the pedagogy and this is causing me to seriously consider moving to a new university in another state.

sean, professor at grand valley state university, at 1:00 pm EDT on September 28, 2007

Knowledge

” .. how do you know that higher education is behaving like nothing has changed?”

Are all Michigan public colleges enjoying higher enrollments? (No)

Are all Michigan counties enjoying economic growth? (No — Michigan has the worst economic performance in the U.S.)

Does Michigan have the same number of public colleges in 2007, as in 1987? (Yes)

What’s changed? (Nothing)

Buzz, at 7:30 pm EDT on September 28, 2007

Redmond, Washington In 2040

I wrote the following letter to my son at the beginning of his junior year at the University of Michigan. Since then Pfizer has closed three “high tech” facilities (in Ann Arbor, Plymouth, and Kalamazoo), eliminating 2,410 jobs at their facilities and causing the loss of an additional 3,723 spin-off jobs at the company’s suppliers in Michigan.

October 19, 2005

Dear ●●●●:

The next time you’re inclined to wonder what you’ll be doing after you get your a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, please contemplate what you won’t be doing. You won’t be graduating with honors and taking a job with one of the former Big Three ... GM, Ford, and (Daimler) Chrysler. When I was a young man forty years ago, having an opportunity like that was like having a free ride to prosperity and, if you played your cards right, an opportunity to live an interesting and meaningful life as well.

But Chrysler has been purchased by Daimler-Benz – although they called it a merger – and Ford and GM have resorted to selling a great many of their products at a small margin above cost, just to move inventories of vehicles very few customers want. Both companies are cutting back their workforces as quickly as the United Auto Workers will let them, and the values of their stock and their Standard & Poor’s debt ratings are declining to levels that are ... well, very disconcerting. And the UAW is now forced to sign off on practically any “restructuring” proposal the industry puts before it ... not unlike the last-gasp “negotiations” of the airline industry unions during the past five years.

I don’t think GM and Ford are on the verge of bankruptcy, but it would not surprise me to see both eagerly pursuing Daimler-Chrysler-like “mergers” with Toyota, Honda, and other fairly well managed automobile manufacturers. Of course UAW membership continues to decline, both in raw numbers and, more dramatically, as a percentage of auto workers in the United States. Neither the industry nor the union is in an enviable position for negotiation.

If, today, you were an automobile worker employed by either GM or Ford, you would be shaking in your boots insofar as the company’s health care benefits and retirement packages are concerned. If. next week, you were a newly employed assembly line worker at either company – not that they’ll be doing any hiring – you could forget about those benefits. They won’t be there. And it won’t be much better for electrical engineers or computer scientists. Oh, did I mention that you’ll be living in a country in which a conservative political agenda will strongly influence public policy throughout most of your lifetime ... and you’ll be living in a state that will attempt to attract industry by compromising the tax base that is necessary to provide virtually all societal benefits, including education. In other words, you’d be well advised not to count on your government for provision of a comprehensive health care program for all citizens (or even for low-income citizens), and don’t be surprised if you have another President like George W. Bush who wants to privatize social security as well. In short, you should not count on capitalism and private enterprise to ensure your long-term well-being ... and especially when you’re old enough to prop your feet up on the ottoman, think about all of those trout in the Green River that are eager to chomp down on a May fly, and wonder if your grandchildren would like to hear your animated reading of Harry Potter and Ogres of Wharton.

This system worked well enough for those of my generation, but, if I were you, I would not count on the long-term viability of companies like Microsoft or IBM or Hewlett-Packard or even Google thirty years from now. Hmmm ... and where are those ‘can’t-miss’ companies like Gateway and Compaq even as we speak? Oh sure, they’re still around ... but for how long? ... how viable are they?

I know, I know ... I can already hear you muttering, “Hey Dad ... it’s the computer industry and computers will be right there in the thick of things forever.” Right ... and that’s precisely what millions of automobile industry employees were saying about cars between 1915 and 1990.

In truth, there are lots of reasons for this sorry state of affairs in American industry, and if you query the CEOs, presidents and senior vice presidents, they’ll provide you with a substantial list of explanations (supported by a mind-numbing collection of graphs of correlated statistics) of the external factors (outsourcing, globalization, cheap labor in third-world countries, installation of fiber-optic cable and growth of the Internet, etc.) that caused this unfortunate state of affairs. In the process of losing our manufacturing and assembly industries, we’ve become a nest of finance dorks, making money by moving money around ... and that’s a worrisome prospect.

I don’t want to trivialize a very complex situation — and don’t get me off on what GM and Ford did to both the quality of their vehicles and the well-being of their employees by spinning off Delphi and Visteon – but here’s my ‘in-a-nutshell’ explanation:

“GM, Ford, and Chrysler are hurting > Because they can’t sell vehicles at a profit > Because the vehicles are (1) poorly designed, (2) of mediocre quality, and (3) more often than not inconsistent with what customers want (or need) > Because the companies are poorly managed.”

Believe me, that explanation works for many more companies than those in the automobile industry ... and I have left off the critical last arrow.

The standard response to business decline is to blame our problems on a multitude of symptoms – i.e., on someone else — but when it comes right down to it, when we burrow down to the root cause, it’s inept management.

So, dear son, I’m very strongly recommending that you never, ever put yourself in a position of having to count on the competence (not to mention the social conscience or ethical standards) of managers trained in American business schools. It’s not that the individuals (the BBAs and the MBAs) are either incompetent or unethical to begin with. It’s just that, when it comes to theories of business management (i.e., what you would wish to call a management paradigm), Gertrude Stein’s famous remark fits: ‘there is no there there.’ So-called ‘management science’ – and isn’t that an oxymoron? — is simply ‘the fad of the year’ followed five years later by the next ‘fad of the year,’ ad infinitum. So after n ≤ 5 years of business school followed by m ≤ 5 years of business practice – and especially at companies like GM, Ford, and Chrysler — these talented, energetic, and ambitious young people find themselves embedded in organizational cultures so mediocre (even dysfunctional) they never recover. They learn to go with the flow.

As undergraduates and MBA students they take their required courses in ‘business ethics’ – whatever you do, don’t outsource those courses to the philosophy department – but the actual content of their core management courses evolves in a manner that has absolutely nothing to do with science or the scientific method or even good business practice. It is – and please forgive me Son – horse shit at it’s best.

Of course the business schools know what they’re doing ... or at least the small number who have more than a few faculty with successful business experience know (and I’m not talking about the Jack Welsh types). Some B-schools even have concentrations for ‘turnaround specialists.’ Think about it ... training turnaround specialists is like saying, ‘Okay, we really screwed up ... but trust us, you can hire someone else we’ve trained to repair the damage the first guy created ... and, oh yes, it won’t cost YOU a dime ... your employees will gladly bear the brut of the turnaround by taking salary cuts (in real dollars) and giving up their benefits (including healthcare, which won’t be provided by their government, and retirement, which, if conservative legislators have their way, will be privatized and will not be affordable for most of them). And by the way, be sure to give your CEO an enormous raise ... how else can you expect to attract and retain such a well-trained, remarkably talented ‘leader?’’

So, dear Son, the next time you see Michael Moore using Flint, Michigan as the backdrop for one of his documentaries, pay special attention. You may well be catching a glimpse of what Redmond, Washington will look like in 2040.

Dad

RWH, at 12:30 pm EDT on September 29, 2007