Sons Of Bill “Broken Bottles”
The Regulatory Ecosystem
I can understand the cliche business fear about regulation and red tape, although in my experience private rather than government red tape is much more of an issue. I don’t have a small business, of course. Still, I suspect that in many if not most cases the hassles of dealing with the government pale beside the hassles of dealing with ordinary commercial firms, particularly the large ones.
So I think that regulation is in general a good thing. It’s how we got all sorts of benefits, from the weekend to the end of child labor to seat belts and ever higher (if still too low) gas mileage. The right has done everything in its power, of course, to make regulations seem by definition illegitimate. That means that there have been almost no regulatory oversight in for-profit higher education.
Actually, there’s too little regulatory oversight in public higher education either, in everything from labor policy to tuition to nepotism. That’s another story. A regulatory system, in any case, is more than simply a set of rules and laws and guidelines. An effective regulatory system has to have teeth, too, in the forms of fines and, maybe especially in the U.S., lawsuits.
So as the Congressional hearings begin to suggest something of the regulatory system being proposed for for-profit higher education, it’s good to see that the rest of the regulatory ecosystem is beginning to come alive too. The website needs a face-lift, but “Higher Education Issues” is a great place to watch the emerging legal action both for students as well as faculty.
Closing the Niche
One of the best things about distance education is the way it can be used to fill all sorts of gaps left by the traditional education system. Despite all of the problems in my industry– it’s been an ugly, messy birth– we do reach students that were not being reached otherwise. One day, I think, this will be something that the public universities do as well. That’s a necessary part of the puzzle, although the slowness of the public response to these possibilities is, well, bizarre.
This lethargic response is both economic– public systems don’t have cash reserves that allow them to keep up with rapid technological change– and ideological. After three decades or more of anti-government propaganda the ideals of public service, or of public services, has eroded beyond all recognition. There’s a thick vein of corruption ruining through the higher education system, rooted in an administrative culture not unlike the corporate culture at large.
Administrations preserve their perquisites like any other corporate executives. In this environment, innovations arise from the periphery rather than the center. Wall Street works on financial con games, while alternative energy folks slowly build a new industrial system. The public universities focus on making their athletic programs even more marketable, while the military builds a flexible school system (“Virtual High School Opens ‘Doors’ to Learning“).