B-Schools And Why Harvard Is The Cancer of Colleges
Harvard. The name conjures up notions of Ivy League prestige, elite education, and wealthy students but what’s in a name? Apparently a lot, it seems over the generation’s colleges and universities have been chasing the pipe dream of competing with them. But what is so bad about their attempts to try and emulate them, isn’t that a good thing? In my article, College Rankings, Do They Really Matter? bonks shared with us an e-book titled, Harvard Envy by Andrew Rosen, CEO of Kaplan, Inc. He has about 40 pages of why such envy is eroding the purpose of colleges and universities and misallocating resources in an attempt to edge up in the rankings. Read more to find out what he has to say…
In his e-book Clayton Christensen, an HBS alumni and author of, The Innovator’s Dilemma talks about sustaining versus disrupting innovations. Rosen then makes the argument that today’s college and universities compete heavily on these "sustaining" innovations without correlation to student performance (i.e. new and improved features to existing products) as opposed to “disruptive innovations” like MIT's Open Course Ware or Kuhn Academy which are cheaper, simpler, and more convenient offerings similar to what MP3 players did to CD market.
• Are colleges and universities trying too hard to be like Harvard?
One factor Rosen mentions is the tenure system. Its exponential growth is endemic to all colleges and rock star faculty are typically scouted to bolster research recognition and improve ranking factors. Even my own research has shown that 1/3 of the cost of tuition is to support faculty and staff alone. As the rest of the industry tries to compete with the Ivy League with what little prestige it has and a laser-like focus on rankings, this of little value to the student’s ROI and such spending, among other factors, is unsustainable in Rosen’s view.
• What did / do you look for in a college, facilities, faculty, ranking, etc?
After reading his e-book, it seems implicit in his writing that public sector subsidies have a lot to do with the misallocation of dollars into higher education and I think it has fueled the "sustaining" innovations model as an effect. In order to try and maintain a high-value for a college degree, I think removing federal subsidies will restrict the supply of students and thereby lower institutional spending in-line with their operational revenues. Then they can compete more on product differentiation and varying tuition levels which would allow them to develop unique core competencies in a disruptive manner and unlike Harvard.
• What’s your opinion of the industry (i.e. subsidies, tuition costs, rankings, etc)?
So that’s my takeaway. Rosen goes into more detail about the history, factors, and evidence on why Harvard Envy is detrimental to the purpose of higher education. Go check it out yourself and come to your own conclusions. You can get it for free here!
Great post, thanks.
I completely agree that the current setup of higher education is messed up and probably unsustainable, but I also disagree with a couple points.
I don't think simply restricting the funding to universities from subsidiaries will fix the problem. If anything, it may cause the universities to try and pursue the college ranking criteria even harder. If they are looking for areas to cut spending, they will attempt to do it in a way that won't damage their rankings. If we agree that the ranking system is flawed (and I certainly do), then we do not want to create an incentive for universities to follow it even further away from their mission of education.
I also don't quite think it is fair to call Harvard the "cancer of colleges." Once again, they exist in a market with flawed incentives (via rankings), and someone has to come out on top. I feel like this is hating the player when we really should be hating the game.
I am also not too fond of the comparison of the above mentioned disruptive innovations in education to the CD to MP3 transition. I am certainly a fan of making education more accessible, and I am very optimistic about these methods. However, I think it remains to be seen if we are losing some element of quality by taking education away from the traditional model of interaction between student and professor. By comparison, moving from physical media to digital media does not represent any drop in quality. If it did, digital music would probably not have been so disruptive to the CD market. If there is some type of quality trade-off to higher education innovation, then it will be much less disruptive than the CD example.
All of that said, I still completely agree with the premise of your article that higher education is completely messed up. I also think you are spot on with the tenure system. I appreciate you taking the time to write this piece. I know it is pretty easy for me to take issue with a couple of points in it, but I certainly don't know what the right answer is either.
Harvard is exceptional as are all of the people that attend it.
Its not as amazing as you think.
If you guys think the housing bubble was bad, just wait until the student loan bubble pops.
Are gov't backed loans securitized?? Short-sell of the millennium right here...
ehhh, i disagree. student loans take up a much smaller proportion of household debt than mortgage loans. Read somewhere that student loans are ~10% of household debt while mortgage loans are usually ~70% of household debt. shouldnt be as bad as the housing bubble... nonetheless, the situation does deserve a lot more attention
All I'm hearing is too much weight is being placed on research and not enough on education per dollar and other student oriented-cost saving measures. Either add those criteria to the current rankings or create a new rankings.
When you have outcome based performance tracking you must make sure the measures tracked match the goals of the organization because everything will be subordinated to the metrics that have an impact on the organization.
This is the grammar police. This thread is under arrest.
B-Schools that follow the HBS case study garbage are total dogshit. HBS admits some great people and many many not so great people (especially 3rd round.) Wharton is by far better, as are many other programs (not a Wharton grad.) It is not Harvard's fault so many shitty schools are copying their format, but no school has damaged B-school education more than HBS with its self-serving queer ass case studies (no disrespect to homos, think south park). Will take an experienced, top pedigree professional without HBS credentials any day over similar top pedigree HBS kid. Just our experience at a top HF. Experiences may vary.
good article....
under performing state schools should definitely cut more majors / faculty. State schools apart of a larger network (like the UC or SUNY system) should just make each school tailored to specific majors. Then make the inter campus transfer acceptance rate higher and now UCB doesn't have to rank against UCLA,\ - the schools work together against other state universities and private colleges.
Why have east asian studies programs at two SUNY schools a few hours away from each other?
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