Everything wrong with universities and how to fix them in 5 minutes!
I’ve been a student in different universities for so many years now. These universities were in different cities and even countries but more or less, they operate the same way.
I think there are fundamental problems with how universities work.
People need education and the universities provide that. But the learning and the knowledge acquired needs to be accessed too. And that part is also done by the universities. I think one of the fundamental problems lies here.
We can all agree that the universities are a form of business when we get to the bottom of it. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that. People provide a service in exchange for money. That’s very normal in the market. But they operate in a way that is not similar to any other businesses.
If for example you hire an electrician, you pay that person for a service. You are the customer and you are the boss. You can fire the person if you were not satisfied with the service. You can easily switch to another electrician. When it comes to business, you don’t care what does the electrician think about you.
In universities, though, the story is a little different. The student pays for a class. He is essentially paying the teacher for a service. But at the same time, the teacher has to evaluate the student and give grades. At first, it seems like since the student is paying the money, he is the boss. But in reality, since the student depends on the teacher’s evaluation, he doesn't have the powers of a boss.
And with this, begins a malfunctioning business interaction which starts with teachers that don’t do an acceptable job. Please don’t tell me that the students have the power to change a teacher. Being in different universities for so many years, has proved to me the opposite. I can give you tens of examples but let me tell you about one situation that I saw just two semesters ago. I was in a class with a teacher with terrible performance. At one point it became too obvious to him and everyone else that no one was satisfied with the way he was trying to teach the material. Then, something strange happened. He turned to the class and said: “Do you think the university cares about how I teach? I bring funds and grants and the university gets 50% of that. Teaching is not even remotely my main job here.”
The truth is, he is absolutely right. Which also brings us to the other part of the problem: Research done in universities.
People need research advances and for some reason they decided to go for researchers already in universities. They pay money for research. The universities get a big portion of it like a godfather protecting a mob. Researchers do the research and get a cut and everyone is happy. Except the students. Because now the universities prefer to hire someone that can bring big money for research and do a mediocre teaching job. I have seen so many of such situations that I think it’s the default now.
With all these, let’s go into my proposal. I think the solution is to break the universities into three institutions.
The first, is just a research center. In other words, if an institution is in the business of education, they should be prohibited from getting money for conducting research too. Of course the same teachers and researchers can work in both institutions but it should be like a second job with no connections whatsoever.
Next, the universities should be limited to teaching and teaching only. They would just hold classes for whatever subject there’s demand for.
And finally, a new institution should be formed that is solely in charge of evaluation.
To run through the whole setup, here’s how a new student goes through the system. First, he goes to the evaluation institution and asks for the requirements to get a degree in some field. They provide him with a list of courses. He can then go to any universities and sign up for as little or as many classes as he wishes. Whenever he feels ready for the test, he goes back to the evaluation center and takes an exam for that course. The evaluation center grades the exam and gives a certificate for passing that course. After passing all the required courses, the evaluation center issues a degree.
There are some results that come from this setup.
• The evaluation center would not care or even ask how you learned the material.
• The student can decide what teaching center to use.
• Since the student is taking single courses, he will be the boss. If a teacher doesn’t do a good job, he’ll be sacked or the student can easily switch to another teaching center.
• Teaching centers will compete to provide better classes and superior learning experience.
• There can be even online classes or home study materials.
• This setup will put the power back in the hands of the customers.
• It provides competition in service providers which leads to better education and less lock-in systems with high tuition.
Everything would be great but there remains only one problem.
Since this is a top-bottom solution, I don’t think it would be ever implemented.
::samic::
Written on 2019-01-31 by Samic.
