Academic

Lisa's post on higher education has me thinking about a case study in the crazy ambitious article I'm writing. What makes a university?  The Washington Post article Lisa describes treats college largely as degree-conferrer and knowledge-transmitter.  It laments the potential loss of "a precious academic tradition" of "institutions that have allowed for academic freedom, communal learning, unpressured research and intellectual risk-taking."  

I may have my head in the sand, but I'm not job-hunting quite yet, thanks to Henry Hansmann's Higher Education as an Associative Good. At the risk of oversimplifying, I'll summarize Hansmann's argument as: students pay to attend college, not to get a piece of parchment with some letters on it or specific bits of information. What students want, specifically, is to hang out with other students.  Why? Because the "attributes of a student's classmates have a strong influence on the quality of the student's educational and social experience, the relationships (including marriage) that the student will have later in life, and the student's personal and professional reputation."

Now, certainly schools, particularly elite schools, can market their selectivity even in the world of online education (eHarvard could tout: "For every one of you at the keyboard right now, 100 failed to gain admission!").  But if you think back on your college days, chances are you don't remember all of the content of all of the 40-odd classes you took.  If you donate to the old alma mater, I'll bet it's because of the people, your classmates, the football/basketball/crew/shotput/whatever team, the whole "college experience."

The WaPo article draws an inapt analogy to the virtual revolution that has "torn apart" the traditional newspaper model.   Although meandering through a paper over breakfast is still a personal joy, it's essentially a solitary pleasure, replaceable by various new media.  Higher education is a mixture of solitary study and group interaction.  It's less about communicating information or conferring a degree than it is about being with peers all doing the same thing at the same time, with a reservoir of goodwill from alumni who have all done the same thing at the same institution before you and have a vested interest in it succeeding. 

Disagree?  CV Resume available on request.