The Ranger Online

Issue date: 9/14/07 Section: Opinion

Editor:

I certainly agree with the spirit of some of the remarks made by Jane Focht-Hansen and Carol Reposa in their April 20 letter to The Ranger. I, too, want more adequate funding, small class sizes and top-notch resources like excellent libraries. In advocating for these things, they criticized using a business model to improve this college.

The business approach is not necessarily wrong. What is wrong is incorrectly applying the business model. You must correctly identify your objective for this method to work. For instance, emphasizing the productive grade rate (the percentage of students who get C or better) is not right in my opinion.

Teachers cannot control that outcome since we cannot force students to study. We are not their bosses or supervisors. Our product is not an outcome like productive grades. It is opportunity. That is what we produce. So using the business model to make productive grades an important output simply shows that we do not understand our product. It does not mean that a business approach is wrong.

For example, this semester I have had very few students show up for the review sessions I hold three times a week even though I offer extra credit for coming. Last semester, several students came each week.

So I made the opportunity available. Some students took advantage of it, others did not. I cannot control if they come, which means I cannot control their outcome, their grade. I believe I am producing what is necessary to help SAC fulfill its mission. Correctly applying the business model would recognize this. So it is the way in which the business model is applied, not the model itself. If we are going to measure anything, it should be how many opportunities we offer the students to learn and succeed, not their final grades.

I strongly disagree, however, with certain statements made by Focht-Hansen and Reposa. In particular, the following paragraph:

"Historically, both colleges and universities were organized separately from the corruptive influence of commerce. The business tenet of the most profit for the least investment was absolutely rejected and such interference forbidden. Community colleges were founded to provide access to the education necessary to carve out a good future, to serve and empower the working classes and veterans."

This statement raises several questions. Do any college or university charters or mission statements actually make a reference to the "corruptive influence of commerce"? Can Focht-Hansen and Reposa point to any studies that show that the business world is significantly more corrupt than other walks of life? Some influence of commerce on education is positive. The Annenberg Foundation has created many teaching and learning resources. For example, Walter H. Annenberg, who made millions of dollars in magazine publishing, founded it.

I tried to find some empirical evidence on the corrupting influence of commerce. So I took the Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom Index for each country and statistically correlated it with Transparency International's national Corruption Perception Index (the way that is calculated, the higher the number, the less national corruption).

The correlation was 0.68, meaning that the more economic freedom there is (the less that commerce is interfered with) the less corruption in a country (I removed the part of the economic freedom index that is based on the corruption index to make sure that the correlation was not artificially biased upward). That correlation was also statistically significant.

Of course, as any good statistics teacher will tell you, correlation is not causation (I have taught college level statistics). Maybe some other, unknown, factor causes both more economic freedom and less corruption. But nonetheless, somehow commerce oriented countries have less corruption than other countries. This should at least call into question the notion that commerce necessarily corrupts.

Then there is "the business tenet of the most profit for the least investment." Why do Focht-Hansen and Reposa say that is the tenet of business? Did they consult any business or economics faculty at this college? Since when do English professors get to be the final word on what the business world is all about?

We could just as easily say that the tenet of business is to create value efficiently. That makes it sound positive. Change the phrasing a little and the perception can change greatly. Certainly some businesses are just out to make a fast buck. But the output of many businesses adds welfare to our society. Many anti-commerce nations, like the former communist countries, were not as successful as ours at producing a variety of quality goods and services.

The phrase "empower the working classes" could easily be misinterpreted. What does that mean? Would it be unreasonable to think it means helping the workers overthrow the capitalist system? Does that mean community colleges have a Marxist mission?

I would certainly agree that we should provide an opportunity for all individual citizens to make a better life for themselves. But the children of business owners should be just as welcome here as students as anyone else. Again, can Focht-Hansen and Reposa find a passage in any community college charter which refers to the working class?

Maybe the business world has some valuable lessons to teach us; maybe it doesn't. But let's not unfairly condemn commerce. It's a valuable asset to any society.

Cyril Morong

Economics Professor

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools