- Aug 20, 2000
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University is an expensive proposition, there's little doubt about that. But what if we switched around the payment model to make student education an investment instead of as a mere faceless consumer?
I think it'd be pretty interesting, but hard to implement as it'd mean an enormous shift away from the current model. Suddenly you wouldn't just have sports teams seeking out talent across the country in local high schools - you'd have scouts from the computer science programs, finance programs, business programs, all analyzing scores and stats and pitching an education at students instead of the other way around. Pretty nifty.
- Learn now, pay laterRather than require students to pay tuition fees, either out of pocket or with the help of third parties, Prof. Pardy suggests that universities themselves should sustain the up-front costs of educating their students. In return, universities would be entitled to a share of students' incomes after graduation.
This implies not only a change in the way we finance students and universities, but our whole view of the relationship between them. Previous reform models see students as consumers, who purchase an education from university providers. But in fact students are themselves the product -- or more precisely, assets to be developed. In Prof. Pardy's model, the university, as an investor in the student's education, acquires a direct stake in his future career prospects.
How does that matter? Under a tuition fee model, however these are financed, the university loses interest in the student more or less from the moment they're paid. Yes, they don't want to jeopardize their reputation, or to lose students part way through their degree. But there are costs to switching schools, and other ways of attracting students besides good teaching: snob appeal, scenic locales, etc.
But a university whose revenues were wholly derived from students' career earnings would be devoted to ensuring students wring every ounce of benefit from their time in school, now and in the future. They would have a vested interest, not only in the quality of the education students received -- no more 800-seat lecture halls and bored, incomprehensible lecturers -- but in placing them in jobs afterwards. They would become lifelong partners in their success.
I think it'd be pretty interesting, but hard to implement as it'd mean an enormous shift away from the current model. Suddenly you wouldn't just have sports teams seeking out talent across the country in local high schools - you'd have scouts from the computer science programs, finance programs, business programs, all analyzing scores and stats and pitching an education at students instead of the other way around. Pretty nifty.