Non-profits now for profits in economic downturn?
Universities and colleges have been labeled for long as non-profit institutions, thus more or less respected as their goal of existence and operation is different from that of businesses. These organizations have their own holy philosophies and missions to adhere to, and they won’t trade their principles in for easy cash or dirty profit.
Things change while circumstances vary. The current economic crisis attracted people’s attention from their daily life to business closures, layoffs and green paper devaluations while it seems no one thought it worthwhile keeping an eye on some colleges/universities in the U.S. mulling degrees in three or two years[1], and claiming the purpose of saving students’ time as well as money[2]. The pretension to considering altruistically as an unselfish people for others aroused disgust even more. You know you cannot cram the learning curve of four years into the condensed three and harvest an immature fruit in the process of growing rather than a ripe one in fall.
The mission is to help students complete their learning, but not to sell them a dissembled package and call it flexibility of pedagogy so that the programs, originally designed as an integrated whole, can be manipulated, taken apart and sold separately to avoid unsalable but potentially valuable courses or to market as much as possible. When separated, the programs become unlinked, courses as individual parts isolated and thus won’t contribute, at least as planned and to that extent, to the mission.
I am not an opponent of the three-year degree idea, not to mention that of two so far as education can be successfully and as planned be accomplished, but if we rest our standpoint on selling as much as we can to reduce losses under current circumstances while advocating the diverted intention, we will ultimately become greedy Wall Street’s dealers ourselves. Take a glimpse at those used-to-be arrogant, but now-cursed and down-and-out bank guys, and they are road signs.
Business ethics may tell us to satisfy our clients with products so as to maintain a sustainable relationship in between, while the killer of the the goose that lays the golden egg only looks at that one single golden egg in the corner, and destroys the ecosystem.
azdailysun.com. 2009. U.S. colleges mull degrees in 3 years. The Arizona Daily Sun, May 24, http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2009/05/24/news/20090524_front_196899.txt (accessed May 28, 2009). ↩︎
Valerie Strauss. 2009. Colleges Consider 3-Year Degrees To Save Undergrads Time, Money. The Washington Post, May 23, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/22/AR2009052203681.html (accessed May 28, 2009). ↩︎