Economics

February 23, 2011 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Michigan Community Colleges Make Push for State Lawmakers to Allow Them to Offer Some Four-Year Programs

A recent article in the Jackson Citizen Patriot was picked up by and featured in the February 23, 2011 e-edition of University Business: http://www.universitybusiness.com/newsletter/daily/dailynewssummary.aspx?newscontenttype=1&newsid=42 .

This article sets the stage for an upcoming fight in the Michigan legislature.

What’s at stake in this battle? The answer depends upon who is answering. Four-year institutions will argue that academic quality and integrity are at stake. They will argue that two-year institutions are not equipped or staffed to offer “legitimate” four-year programs. The four-year institutions will argue that four-year programs are our forte. That’s what we do. Shouldn’t students get the best education available?

That last question is an interesting question, because students will agree and then say the education that four-year institutions are offering are not available to them. The JCP interviews one such student. Her statements are telling.

Registered nurse, Stephanie Palmer wants to earn a bachelor’s degree in nursing at Jackson Community College. What are the three reasons she gives? 1) Convenience: It’s close to her home. 2) Cost: It’s…”less expensive than a four-year college.” 3) Flexible schedule: JCC offers greater scheduling flexibility for working parents like her.

At this point, the four-year institutions jump up and ask the public:”When you’re sick, do you want a nurse treating you who hasn’t received the best education possible?” I’m sorry but this is in no way meant to disparage Stephanie or any other registered nurse. But all registered nurses have already taken the required clinical courses and passed all the licensure tests to permit them to practice nursing. I would dare say that if you have visited a clinic within the past five years, you have been treated by at least one registered nurse, and that you probably didn’t notice any difference in your treatment.

So why would Stephanie or any other registered nurse want to get a four-year BSN degree? The BSN opens new opportunities to nurses, including specialty training, higher pay and more responsibilities. Many hospitals hire registered nurses but restrict their duties. A recent study by done by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing reported that surgical patients treated by more nurses with bachelor’s degrees had a greater chance of survival than those treated by fewer bachelor trained nurses. Results like this have led some hospitals to require the BSN as a prerequisite for service on post-operative patients.

I have spent more than forty-years at four different institutions overseeing and studying non-traditional adult education programs along with the traditional educational programs at those institutions. During those years, the three reasons given by Stephanie were always the primary reasons adults gave for selecting non-traditional educational programs over traditional academic programs. Interestingly, at one of those institutions, the three primary reasons given by commuters for selecting the on-line alternative over a residential program were: 1) Convenience; 2) Cost; 3) Flexibility of scheduling. For both categories of student, non-traditional learners and commuters, these three characteristics outweighed any perceived difference in program quality when it came to program choice.

The next three most frequent reasons given by adults in program selection were 4) Program meets students’ needs. The curriculum and examples are related to what the students do or want to do. The students see the immediate usefulness of this learning. The students can apply the learning immediately. 5) Program uses pedagogical methods that the students understand and help the students learn. 6) Prospective students believed that the alternative programs provided excellent learning. The students and others who have gone through the program have received work place or other external recognition for things learned through the program.

Four-year programs respond with comments stressing the real worth of a program is not immediate gratification, but long-term usefulness and that students are not the best judges of long-term usefulness. That may well be the case but the four-year institutions have not done enough to convince students of these arguments.

The one argument that is almost never heard in public venues is that if enough students switch to the two-year institutions or alternative learning style programs, the traditional four-year programs will be hurt financially. For public institutions, the second biggest source of income is from the state, county or city, and that is currently based on enrollment. The more students that go elsewhere, the less money these institutions receive. Generally tuition is the main source of income in all institutions, and the fewer the number of students, the less income is available for anything the institutions want or need to do, such as hire or pay faculty. The fewer faculty members hired and the less they are paid, the more unhappy they will be.

January 18, 2011 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Moody’s Investors Service’s Take on Higher Education

The headline for the January 16, 2011 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education , ” Financial Outlook is Brighter for Some Colleges,but Still Negative for Most” doesn’t tell the whole story. This story may be found at http://chronicle.com/article/Financial-Outlook-Is-Brighter/125973/?sid=at (Note: YOu may need a subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education to view the article.) If the bright side is that a “relatively small number of colleges may be stable (no worse than what they have been), what the down side? The down side is that the financial outlook for most college will be worse. The Moody’s report will be available to Moody subcribers later this week.

What does Moody’s think is the secret to do as well as you did before? You must be well-managed and be diversified, i.e., not too dependent upon one source of income, such as tuition, advancement dollars, auxiliary enterprises or state support.

If the outlook for the have’s is stability, what’s the outlook for the have-nots’? Moody’s suggests that it will be a very bumpy road. They are projecting a number of institutions will have to retrench, merge or fold completely.

According to Moody’s the primary three factors driving the 2011 outlook for colleges are:

1. “Weakened prospects for net tuition growth because of a market preference for low-cost or higher-reputation competitors.

2. “differing degrees of pressure on non-tuition revenues” such as philanthropy or research money.

3. A “need for stronger management of operating costs, balance-sheet risks and capital plans.”

For all who don’t think that higher education is or should be a business, all these negative signs are closely tied to operations of a business. Moody is suggesting that if we don’t operate our colleges as well-run business, we may not be operating at all.

August 31, 2010 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

According to the Duck Test, Higher Education is a Business

According to the DUCK TEST,

Higher Education is a Business

By Baylis

I grew up next to a farm where I would play with the farmer’s two kids several times a week in their barn, the farm-yard or their pastures. One day while we were playing in the farm yard, the farmer came trudging in from his corn fields muttering to himself. When he saw us playing he growled, “According to the Duck Test, that tractor of mine is a piece of junk.” We all knew what had happened. The tractor had broken down out in the field like it usually did every other week. However, I guess I had a puzzled look on my face and I muttered, “Oh.”

The farmer looked at me and said, “Son, do you know the Duck Test?” I hesitated a little and finally said sheepishly, “No Sir, I don’t.” The farmer, with a condescending glance said, “Well you really should, so let me tell you. When I see an animal in the farm-yard that looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, and flies like a duck, I am very confident that animal is a duck.” I have never forgotten that explanation. It has come in handy a number of times since that day in the farm-yard.

The mantra within higher education for many years has been that education is not a business. For a well-reasoned argument showing how businesses must be businesses, I would refer you to the article by Milton Greenberg in the March/April 2004 issue of the EDUCASUSE Review, entitled “A University is not a Business (and Other Fantasies).” You may find it using the following link:
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume39/
AUniversityIsNotaBusinessandOt/157887.

Relying on the duck test, my argument is the following: Institutions of higher education must be incorporated by the state. They own property, pay taxes or users fees, have employees, who many times will form or threaten to form a union for bargaining power against an entrenched management known as the administration. These employees expect fringe benefits such as medical insurance and retirement plans. Institutions of higher education are required to pay FICA for all employees, including faculty. If the institutions didn’t pay FICA for faculty, the faculty would be required to pay FICA as self-employed individuals, making them businesses. Universities sell or collect money for products or services, called credit hours, rendered to individuals, compete for students (just like businesses compete for customers) and are definitely susceptible to market forces in recruiting faculty and students, . Just like a business, the expenses of a given institution of higher education can only exceed its revenue for a limited period of time. It doesn’t matter if the colleges are not-for-profit or for-profit, if their expenses exceed their revenue for too long, they can be forced to declare bankruptcy and close down. Institutions of higher education are required to undergo annual audits of finances including balance sheets and cash flow sheets. Institutions of higher education look, act and speak like businesses, so according to the duck test, I am very confident institutions of higher education are businesses.

June 21, 2010 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

A Modest Proposal for the Re-engineering of American Higher Education

A Modest Proposal for the Re-engineering of American Higher Education

By Baylis ?²

For many years, I have been intrigued with any title that begins with a phrase “A Modest Proposal.” Jonathan Swift’s classic satirical essay from 1729 has conditioned everyone to know that what follows is anything but modest, and possibly bordering on sensationalism. I have deliberately used the phrase “A modest proposal” to get people’s attention. However, the heart of the essay is not a satire. I truly believe that American higher education would benefit from adopting some, if not all twenty, of the suggestions that I make in the body of the essay.

I will also admit that I used another sensational term in the title of the essay. “Re-engineering” grabs people’s attention because it has come to mean radical changes that could affect the entire institution. That’s exactly the idea that I wanted to convey.

Education is helping students develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions necessary to move them from where they are to where they need or want to be. There are two actors in this process. Each actor has different responsibilities and roles. Students must come to education with goals. They should know what they want to be. The role of faculty is to identify where the students are and the best route to take the students to where they want to or need to be. Faculty need to realize that the students’ goals are important and they should not unnecessarily impose their own goals on students. Faculty should serve as guides in assisting students along the route to reaching their goals. Students need to realize that education is hard work. It is not an entitlement; it is a privilege.
American higher education should adopt a Social Change Model of Education as the foundational philosophy for building its superstructure. The basic tenet of a Social Change Model of Education is that education should be about helping students learn so that they can improve themselves, society, and the community.
Within the framework of a Social Change Model of Education, institutions need to focus the educational process on helping students acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to live useful lives in order to better themselves and society. An institution must pay attention to all three areas of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. In a 1978 hit song, Michael Lee Aday, commonly known as Meatloaf, suggested that in the area of personal relationships, “Two out of three, ain’t bad” However, in education, “Two out of three, ain’t enough.”
Each institution must have a clearly delineated mission. All individuals involved with the given institution must have a solid understanding of the mission of the institution and a firm commitment to that mission.
The mission of an institution must be clearly communicated to all prospective students and the community at large. The leaders of an institution, especially the president, administrators and faculty, must understand the history of the institution and how that affects the current development of the institution and possible future development.
Institutions need to hire, evaluate and reward faculty in terms of helping students learn. Good teaching should be measured in terms of student learning. Teaching itself is only a means to the end of learning, not an end in itself.
Institutions should consider revamping graduation requirements more in line with competencies instead of credit hours earned in course blocks. What’s more important, the number of credits earned by sitting through the required number of class hours, or what a student knows, can do, and values?
Schools need to consider scrapping the current semester, trimester. or quarter systems that are agriculturally based, in favor of a more flexible schedule that allows or even encourages learning anytime and anywhere, possibly in a 24/7/365 format.
Institutions should be aware and open to the possibility that curricula will evolve. Some new disciplines will emerge while some old disciplines will become obsolete.
Institutions should consider revamping their fiscal model away from the charge for credit hours to one more closely aligned with charging students a credentialing fee based upon completion of competencies.
Faculty must be encouraged to study learning theory with an eye to understanding and using different teaching modalities other than just lecturing. Faculty must be encouraged to experiment with educational pedagogies and technologies appropriate to discipline.
Faculty must know their students. They must be aware of and account for the varying goals of the students they are teaching. It is not the job of faculty to produce clones of the faculty. The job of faculty is to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to improve themselves and society.
Institutions should be prepared to provide appropriate learning spaces and resources for faculty and students, including classrooms, laboratories, libraries, and technology.
Institutions should consider paying faculty according to their track record of helping students learn or complete competencies, instead of their degrees and years of service.
Institutions must be prepared to offer developmental resources to faculty to help them use the most appropriate pedagogies and technologies in their teaching.
Faculty should be open to the possibility of unbundling their work. Faculty may have to be open to the idea that faculty governance is too expensive and inefficient.
Faculty need to understand that tenure and academic freedom are not entitlements, but are privileges.
Faculty and institutions need to be abused of their unattainable illusions of grandeur. Not all institutions can be prestigious, research universities. Institutions must get off the academic treadmill of trying to keep up with the institutions that are their neighbors or competitors.
Institutions must realize that not all institutions will look the same. Some institutions will be geared toward a residential clientele. Some institutions will focus on commuter students and some institutions will serve a mixed clientele. Serving these differing collections of student types will mean institutions will have to tailor facilities, curricula, schedules, and teaching modalities to the students they are serving.
Everyone associated with an institution–Board of Trustees, President, administration, faculty, and students–must be held accountable for their part in the well-functioning of the institution and promoting student learning.

I believe the quality academic institutions of the future may look and feel very different from the quality academic institutions of the past. That’s the basis for my modest proposal. We should be ready to embrace the new look of academic institutions and not be afraid of it.

June 14, 2010 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Comparison of American Higher Education with American Automotive Industry

Comparison of U.S. Higher Education and the U.S. Automotive Industry

Bayard (“By”) Baylis, retired

Former Provost of Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids, MI

Recently as I watched a major league baseball game on television, the play-by-play announcer commented on the large number of Japanese players that were on the rosters of the U.S. major league teams. The color commentator pointed out that one of the up and coming star pitchers in Japan asked the Japanese pro teams not to draft him because he was going to go to America to play in the best league in the world. That phrase “best in the world” rattled around in my brain. Where had I heard that before? Twenty years ago, U.S. automotive manufacturers were throwing that phrase around in talking about their cars. The engineering and the construction was “the best in the world.” German and Japanese manufacturers were watching U.S. firms to see “how to do it so that they could emulate them.” But automotive manufacturers were not the only group throwing that expression around. For forty years, I have heard that same expression in higher education. U.S. higher education is the best in the world. People from all over the world are coming to America to take advantage of the myriad of opportunities and to see how it should be done.

What’s the problem? Look at the American automotive industry today. To investigate the health of the automotive industry, I did what almost every student of the 21^st century does, I went to the internet. I found a Wall Street Journal Article from November 22, 2005, entitled, “A Tale of Two Industries.” The article began by stating that General Motors had just announced that it would close nine plants and cut some 30,000 jobs. I did not remember that exact article. However, I remembered the announcement. We had just moved from a small Indiana county that was rocked by that announcement. The largest employer in the county was GM. Buried in that announcement was the fact that GM was closing one of its two plants in the county and cutting almost 2,000 jobs. Later that week we found out that this included the job of one of our former neighbors. These cuts took a huge toll on a county that already had an unemployment rate hovering at around 10% at the time. The article continued by stating “There’s no doubt that GM and Ford especially are in a big hole thanks to high fixed costs and shrinking market share.” The article went on to outline the rise of a second American auto industry; one centered more in the South than the Upper Midwest. This new competitor was paying its employees well and as of November 2005 accounted for 26% of all cars made in America. The article suggested that the decline in the Big Three companies represented a failure to provide products for which people were willing to pay a premium. What’s this got to do with U.S. higher education?

I believe a 2002 research piece by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education entitled “The Iron Triangle” explains the connection. The report begins with the premise that “parents and students…are starting to question whether higher tuition costs-and the debt families shoulder to pay them are always warranted.” How many students and parents are willing to pay a premium to go to a residential liberal arts college or a state flagship university?

Plant after automotive plant in the Upper Midwest has closed, wreaking economic disaster on family after family and town after town. Will we see the same thing in higher education? I don’t know but we have been led to believe that the rate at which colleges are closing is increasing. To check out this assumption, I did a little research on the matter. Using the best list of closed colleges that I could find, which is maintained by Mr. Ray Brown from Westminster College in Fulton, MO. Mr. Brown maintains this list on a personal webpage <http://www2.westminster-mo.edu/wc_users/homepages/staff/brownr/ClosedCollegeIndex.htm> to help displaced alumni find out how they can get transcripts from defunct schools. In Mr. Brown’s list I found 1385 U.S. colleges that have closed since 1850. As I compiled Brown’s data I found counter to general public opinion and my intuition, which may have been biased by current publicity, the worst decade for school closing was the 1970’s with 183 school closings, compared to 46 so far this decade. The second worst decade was the 1930’s with 134. The next worst decade was the 19-teens with 126 closings. The 1990’s was the fourth worst with 100 school closings. I should have remembered the 1970’s. I was working at a struggling college at the time. It was just barely getting enough students to hang on. It did eke out an existence until the 1990’s when it finally closed, a victim of its own lack of foresight and planning during the good times. It lost students to colleges with better facilities and more programs. Are there any patterns to the schools that closed? A quick look indicated that a higher percentage of the closed schools were smaller schools in agricultural areas west of the Mississippi River or South of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Data compiled from a list of closed institutions maintained by Mr. Ray Brown on a personal webpage

Why do college personnel have the opinion that we are in bad times? I think it is due to the fact that generally many of us in higher education administration experienced the good times and growing enrollments during the golden ages of the 1980’s and first half of the 1990’s. During these years, we grew comfortable in our kettle. We are like the crab or lobster that grew comfortable in the pot that was slowing coming to a boil. When we finally realized that the water was hot, we started clawing frantically to find a way out of the kettle. Compared to the 1980’s, the last several years have been a famine. Given the actual number of college closings so far this decade, it appears that we are surviving the famine and the hot water. However, before we get too cocky, we need to remember that for every year of small entering classes, it takes four years of plenty to fill up the store house again; plus the conditions that brought about the famine have not improved and may even be getting worse. If we think about the dust-bowl conditions in Middle America during the 1930’s, some of those areas are still not fertile enough to yield significant crops. Am I suggesting that we are heading into an educational dust bowl? Not if we are cognizant of the dangers and act appropriately.

We can analyze school closings. What we don’t have is good data on the number of individual programs or degree offerings that have been shut down. I think it would be an interesting study to analyze program closings. Even for colleges that do not close, college administrators and faculty members are very worried about flat enrollment or enrollment declines. Without enrollment increases, the new buildings, the new programs and new equipment, and salary increases are not going to happen. I believe that the reason for this is the fact that U.S. higher education is using a revenue plan that is doomed to failure. To my brothers and sisters in the academy, I don’t apologize for thinking of higher education as a business. For forty years, I have been very thankful that the paycheck at the end of the month cleared the bank. I was also very thankful when I saw that the medical insurance premiums had been paid for another month. To provide the revenue for these items, colleges have to act as if they are businesses that provide a service in exchange for revenue. They have to sell something. What do colleges sell? I am pleased to say that most colleges do not sell degrees. What they sell are credit hours. Credit hours are the pricing mechanism used by most colleges. Credit hours are also the base for faculty wages. What’s the problem with this? How do you increase revenue? There are essentially five ways to increase revenues in this format.

Sell more credit hours by increasing enrollment
Sell more credit hours by making the current students take more credit hours
Charge more per credit hour
Pay faculty less by reducing wages per credit hour
Pay faculty less by becoming more efficient in offering more credit hours for the same pay as now.

In the current climate, it is highly unlikely that the general public will take kindly to options 1 through 3. Options 4 and 5 will be fought by faculty members that believe they are already underpaid and overworked.

In the face of these prospects, there has been the growth of a second educational industry (sound familiar?). The Sloan Consortium which conducts an annual survey of online education in the U.S. reported in their 2008 report entitled, “Staying the Course,” that more than two-thirds of all U.S. accredited institutions offered some online education in 2007, with almost 4 million students taking at least one online course. This is more than twenty percent of all U.S. higher education students, eerily similar to the automotive industry numbers. It also represented more than a 12 percent increase over the number taking online courses in the fall of 2006. This rate of growth is more than 10 times the growth rate of the number of students taking on-ground courses in U.S. higher education institutions. Many proprietary institutions are prospering, as well as the online educational operations of public flagship universities and many residential liberal arts colleges. Why? They are providing a product at a reasonable price in a fairly convenient format for a public that does not believe the premium that the residential liberal arts colleges and flagship universities are charging is worth the difference in price. I think we should be taking seriously the question raised by Joseph Marr Cronin and Howard E. Horton in their May 22, 2009 Commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, “Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?”

June 14, 2010 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

What does higher education have in common with the watch industry, the chocolate industry and toilet paper manufacturers?

What Can Higher Education Learn From the Watch Industry, the Chocolate Industry and the Toilet Paper Industry?

Bayard Baylis

Many in higher education do not believe that higher education can’t learn anything from any industry since they do not believe that education is an industry. I believe higher education is a very special industry that focuses on knowledge and learning. As such we in higher education have a responsibility to learn as much as we can from any source. We can learn much from these industries and endeavors. Recently, there have been a number of comparisons made between higher education and the automotive industry and the housing boom. I have written one comparing higher education and the automotive industry that is available as another part of this blog.

From the appearance of the first clock in Sumeria around 5000 BC, clock development appeared to be proceeding at a snail’s pace until the 14^th century, when large mechanical clocks started to appear in Europe. For the next 300 years clock development slowed to a crawl again until the beginning of the 17^th century when Peter Henlein, a scientist from Nuremberg, came up with a design for clocks based upon the use of wound springs, which oscillated at a precise rate. Henlein’s design of a wound spring allowed for small clocks that could be carried by individuals, thus by 1680 people were carrying pocket watches. Over the next century better materials and better production methodologies, driven by the needs of soldiers for a hands-free time device, lead to the creation of the wrist watch. Over the next two centuries, without any major changes in design, the accuracy of clocks was increased to one second per day. The next major change in clock design occurred in the 1920s when oscillation of quartz crystals was used to generate an electric signal and operate an electronic clock display. Scientific advances of the 1930s and 1940s made possible clocks built on the vibrations of atoms excited by electromagnetic waves.

From 1950 to 1980, there were two competing camps in wrist watch production. The first was the mechanical wrist watch design. The second was the electronic watch. Several manufacturers decided to stay with the centuries old design and manufacturing pattern. They believed that they had a loyal customer base who were willing to pay the higher price for a high quality, hand-crafted time piece that could also be considered a piece of fine jewelry. Doesn’t this sound like higher education, particularly residential, liberal arts colleges? What customer would want a digital display? Didn’t watches have to have a face with hands? Why would people want to change? So the manufacturers didn’t. Their market share held up for a while, but eventually the electronic watches, even with those strange digital displays, overtook the traditional watches with faces and hands. In order to stay viable, many of the older, established watch companies had to start making both kinds of watches. Even today, there are still people who appreciate and want a prestige watch piece and are willing to pay the price for such a hand-crafted watch. The customers who choose this option can’t say it is for accuracy because the electronic models are more accurate. It is a decision that is based on other factors.

What lessons can we learn from the watch manufacturers? The first lesson is that we need to be open to and continually looking for new ways of doing what we do, particularly ways that are very different from the current way of doing it. Incremental design changes will most likely only make incremental changes in results. To make large changes we have to look for significant design changes. Why is this important for higher education? I would propose that many people inside and most outside of higher education believe that we can do much better in the education of college students. Having done the same thing for a hundred years with the same results, why should we expect a different result if we continue to follow this pattern with only small changes?

The second lesson from the watch manufacturers is that if we are not willing to change we may not have the opportunity to continue to do it the old way. What the traditional watch manufacturers were doing was making art. The product was a piece of art. However, the new design watches and new manufacturers were challenging the market share and viability of the traditional companies. A number of traditional companies decided to go with dual processes and dual products so that they could continue the work of the artisans within the company and still supply the loyal, traditional customers with the traditional product that they wanted.

The third lesson is that we can’t always dictate what the public will want and what the public will purchase. Another way of stating this third lesson is that it is just not all about us. We do need to consider the needs and desires of the individuals we are or should be serving. IS higher education ready to accept this? What did the public want from watches? The traditionalists in the watch manufacturers could not understand how the general public would want or buy the strange new watches. Some of them didn’t even have hands. They had digital displays. They were not works of art. What was the general public telling the watch manufacturers? Art was not the most important thing in the minds of the public. They wanted an inexpensive instrument that would provide them with the time of day. An inexpensive digital display was more than sufficient to do that. What is the general public telling higher education? I believe they are telling us that they want an inexpensive credential that will open the doors to new or better jobs. We had not convinced them that knowing how to think would be important to them and to society as a whole.

What’s so special about chocolate? Almost everyone remembers the famous line from Forrest Gump, “My Mama always said that, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.’” Is Education like a box of chocolates? It is fairly obvious that we can’t predict exactly what is going to happen to each student as he or she goes through the educational process.

What can higher education learn from the chocolate industry? Have you ever walked down Bay Street in San Francisco, CA toward Ghirardelli Square and the Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Manufactory? Several blocks from Ghirardelli Square, you can smell a sweet aroma that you can almost taste. Have you ever walked down Chocolate Avenue in Hershey, PA? You can smell a sweet aroma that is similar to but still different from the aroma in San Francisco. The difference in aromas is not the biggest difference between Ghirardelli and Hershey chocolate. The two companies use different marketing approaches and different pricing structures. They use different recipes and different processes to manufacture their chocolate. However, to truly appreciate the difference you have to taste it. The difference in flavors from the chocolate of the two companies is easily detected. The two companies represent a truly bifurcated industry. Ghirardelli can be taken as a representative of companies like Dove, Cadbury, Godiva and other gourmet chocolate makers. Hershey can be taken as a representative of companies like Mars, Nestle and other chocolate candy makers. The gourmet chocolate makers do not attempt to infiltrate the customer base of the chocolate candy makers. The gourmet chocolate makers know they can’t compete on price and with some people in terms of the taste. The chocolate candy makers for the most part do not attempt to produce gourmet chocolate. It is not what they are known for. Production of gourmet chocolate would be too expensive. Their customer base would not pay for gourmet chocolate. For example, I greatly enjoy a Cadbury cream filled chocolate egg; however, one of my daughters when she was growing up would not touch a Cadbury egg. She much preferred a Nestle chocolate egg in her Easter basket. Our other daughter was turned onto Dove chocolate at an early age and would turn up her nose to regular chocolate candy in favor of the smooth taste and consistency of the Dove chocolate. To her the difference in taste was well-worth the difference in price, even when she was spending her own money.

Higher education is a bifurcated industry. Prestigious, residential liberal arts colleges are expensive and almost universally considered high quality. As suggested by Charles Murray in his book “Real Education” and a number of other higher education writers in a November 8, 2009, Chronicle of Higher Education article entitled, “Are Too Many Students Going to College?”, the residential liberal arts colleges are beyond the academic reach of 85% or more of American high school graduates. These authors are not suggesting that these students give up on college altogether. They are suggesting that the residential liberal arts college model is not the most appropriate model for them. What models are appropriate? The authors are suggesting the local community colleges and smaller comprehensive colleges and universities with technical and developmental programs are less costly and more appropriate options. These authors are not suggesting a decrease of access to quality academic programs for qualified students, but to use academic intelligence and not economic status as a guide to opening the door to higher education. This seems to be consistent with the historical record from ancient Greece. No students, regardless of economic status, were excluded from the educational process. However, the ancient Greeks were academic elitists and seemed to be very strict in their use of academic ability as a measuring stick. Students at a very early age were evaluated. For those who didn’t have the ability to meet minimum requirements were sent off to the guilds to learn a trade. At about age 17, only students with the highest academic qualifications were permitted to continue to the highest form of academic pursuits, the reflective pursuit of theoretical knowledge. Students who did not meet these standards were sent off to military or public service options.

If we look at the chocolate candy industry, we would conclude that the residential, liberal arts colleges and the comprehensive institutions need to “stick to their knitting” and not try to interject themselves into the other’s prime market. Comprehensive institutions, particularly commuter-based institutions, are not well set up to engage in residential liberal arts education in terms of curricula and pedagogy. To switch would be very expensive and time-consuming, with no guarantee of positive results. For these institutions, many of their students are not ready for or open to the different type of education.

So far in this essay I have tried to use common industries and products to help us learn what’s happening in higher education. For my third common product, I wanted to find a product that was a universal product. It had to be available everywhere. I wanted a product that had a distribution system that was effective, efficient and economical. I also wanted a product for which the distribution system had changed drastically from its original form because, in its original form, the distribution system could not keep up with the demand for the product. One obvious choice is toilet paper.

What is the history of toilet paper? Toilet paper seems to have originated in China in the 15^th century. Large 2 feet by 3 feet sheets of scented paper were produced for the use of the emperor to clean himself. Sheets of this size are obviously not practical for mass production or wide-spread distribution of the product. By the end of the 16^th century, the invention of the flushing toilet and the improvements in community sewers and private septic systems sparked the need for more practical disposable paper cleaners. It was not uncommon for people to use newspapers and other written material. By the middle of the 19^th century perforated rolls of soft paper became available in the USA. Paper in this form is now universally available and consistent throughout all of the USA and much of the world.

What’s this got to do with education? What are many students seeking from education? I believe that for many students their most important desire is to obtain credentials. How do students obtain credentials? They accumulate the credit hours that colleges are selling. Many students have questions about the cost, convenience and quality of the credentials that are available to them in the current format.

If colleges and universities do not address the concerns of students who wish to obtain credentials, then students will go to other vendors where they can get credentials more conveniently and more economically. If colleges and universities are to be a force in providing credentials to students, they must find ways to distribute appropriate credentials in ways that are effective, efficient and economical. The current means of credential distribution do not seem to be doing this. Colleges and universities must look to possibly new and very different distribution means, just like the toilet paper industry had to come up with a very different approach, going from individual sheets of paper to rolls of perforated paper. What will be the paper roll equivalent in college credentialing?