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I disagree, Michael! Despite our common HBS background, I think profit is a poor motive for helping kids, because it too often winds up incenting the wrong things (Trump U. anyone?) and seeking size and scale where it shouldn't (large-scale competitive sports?). On the other hand, tying payment to performance (i.e. colleges paid only on …
I disagree, Michael! Despite our common HBS background, I think profit is a poor motive for helping kids, because it too often winds up incenting the wrong things (Trump U. anyone?) and seeking size and scale where it shouldn't (large-scale competitive sports?). On the other hand, tying payment to performance (i.e. colleges paid only on contingency of kids being measurably helped) may be a good thing—if we can figure out useful metrics (e.g. getting hired and retained at something you want to do?) The incentive for large companies to invent ways to sell into the huge school-related market at high margins is huge. Perhaps, at the least, any company contracted with should either be a not-for-profit or have a not-for-profit subsidiary. Or do you think the whole not-for-profit concept (and the regulation it entails) is wrong? Is profit the best motive for bringing up young people?
My piece wasn't about the profit motive, although I've edited an entire book on that called Private Enterprise and Public Education. And I do think profits can be a very useful thing in education when channeled toward the right end.... and thus, I am in agreement that colleges should be regulated on outcomes. That's the argument of the piece. And as I've also written elsewhere, that ought to be around the very thing you just identified (e.g. getting hired and retained at something you want to do). I've given more tangible metrics of how that would get calculated but this is the argument of the piece.
Excellent. We agree on many things. "Overreach" by the government is not a place where we do. It may, in fact, add some cost, but I don't think it will discourage innovation— and it may discourage cronyism and graft, which is the aim. I'm for—as I'm sure you are—good use of my tax money. We may disagree on "good uses," but that's why our society is good—we can disagree in public. I don't see this as overreach, but the right does, and the right, in my lifetime, has always fought harder (and dirtier) for their POV. So who knows? I think our government (and we all) have to get better at clarifying common goals and working together towards them. :)