Tag Archives: Adam Smith

Barlow’s Law: Students Don’t Want To Get Their Money’s Worth

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(This is Part 2 in a series of blogs I am doing entitled “Why It Doesn’t Make Economic Sense to Run Education like a Business.”)

We’ve all been students, so we recognize this scenario:  a professor announces that the next class will be cancelled.  Our reaction?

Of course, if we students are really “customers” and education is a “product,” then we are just pretty stupid consumers.  Think about it.  If we had purchased an 8-day package vacation in Aruba and the travel agent called us up on the beach and told us that one day of the vacation had been cancelled and we would have to fly back early, we would not be happy campers.  Or sun-bathers, as it were.

Then why are we so happy to miss a day of education, especially when higher education is so expensive?

Education is a different animal.

Students don’t want to get their money’s worth.  Barlow’s Law seems so common-sensically obvious (at least in American culture) that I probably ought to call it Barlow’s axiom, which would make it a self-evident truth.

Teachers know that they can please their students by giving them less instruction or less demanding education.  If a professor cuts an assignment, reduces reading, or eases up in any way, many students are happy.  Many students will try to sign up for easy professors.  Many figure out ways to get a decent grade with the smallest amount of work.  Many cheat. If we are let out of class early, we are happy.  Meanwhile, if extra reading and writing is required, we “customers” will complain and protest that the professor is being unfair.

Imagine striking a deal for a new Lexus and getting excited when the dealer says he will have to cut out the heated seats or the air conditioning.  Imagine complaining and protesting that the dealer is being unfair if he throws in a sun roof at no extra cost.

According to Adam Smith, society benefits under capitalism because self-interest leads businesses to produce better and cheaper products which is what customers, in their self-interest, want.  The problem is that self-interest is a complicated thing.  Yes, we know it is in our self-interest to get a good education.  But we also have immediate self-interests that run counter to the long-term habits required to obtain a good education:  we would rather play video games or hang with friends or eat nachos or check Facebook or sleep than study.  A truly stupid show on Comedy Central suddenly becomes absolutely fascinating when we have a paper to write.  Socialized from childhood as a consumer (see “Trix: cereal”), what’s a “customer” to do?

New Picture (1)Now, it is true that there are students who sincerely want the very best that an academic course can give them.  Many do not want easy professors or classes where they learn little.  In fact, most of us have probably gone back and forth between desiring a good, challenging class and wishing it were cancelled.  Usually, though, true academic desires and virtues are cultivated over time from parents or a great teacher along the way, but not from our economic system.  The desires for a challenging class stem from impulses opposite of those intensified by consumerism, such as immediate gratification, entertainment, comfort and self-indulgence.

You might point out that the economic desire for a well-paying job motivates many students to do well.  True, but I would question whether this is really the best kind of education one can get.  In fact, not all ambitious, highly motivated students deeply desire the best education they can get.  An undefinable number of hard-working, ambitious students highly desire the status or connections or economic opportunities that an education can give them, as opposed to the education itself.  In other words, many are more interested in a diploma from a prestigious institution or good grades than they are in what a given course will actually teach them.  And they will pay a lot of money for this.  A few years ago, a college in Pennsylvania did nothing but increase its tuition by a significant amount (several thousands of dollars) under the theory that students would perceive the school to have more prestige with an increased price.  Their applications from high-achieving students went up.

That points to another unsettling possibility: treating students as customers may actually be increasing the cost of higher education.  In their competition for “customers,” colleges feel the pressure to build single-person dorm rooms, lavish student centers, hip dining halls, and numerous support services to attract students.  Sometimes I ask non-athletes if they would be willing to have our college cut all intercollegiate athletics, if it would save them $1500/year on their tuition.  Most would not want to change – they would rather pay more to have athletics on campus, even if they are not competing themselves.  Socialized from childhood as consumers, (see “Trix: cereal”), students want a particular lifestyle in college.

When we treat education as a consumer item, we end up with an inferior product at a higher price.  This seems to be what “customers” want.

So, does it really make economic sense to run education on a business model?

Why it doesn’t make economic sense to run education like a business

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If you have sent a child to college lately, or gone yourself, you know that high costs are a problem.

This situation has led a lot more people today to think that education ought to be run more like a business.  At first glance, this makes sense.  Education is expensive.   It often produces students with questionable academic qualities.  Businesses, meanwhile, are very good at cutting costs, increasing efficiency, and innovating to produce better products.  So, it is thought, we should think about students as “customers,” and education as a “product.” Apply business principles to education, and we will bring costs down and produce a better product!  Everybody wins!  Happy ending!

Nope.

Apply business principles to education and we will produce a worse product.  In fact, right now we may be producing a worse product and making education more expensive because we are increasingly treating education like a business.

"Student" or "Customer?" Stay tuned for the answer.

“Student” or “Customer?” Stay tuned.

Education is a different animal.  Yes, there are economic dynamics to education that we need to think about carefully.  But if we actually take a close look at how things work on the ground – in the classroom – we will see that students don’t behave like customers in a capitalist society.  Nor do we improve education in the same way that we improve economic products.

Adam Smith should be taught but not implemented in the classroom. Adam Smith (as you all remember very well from your history courses, right?) was the Enlightenment thinker who laid out many of the essential principles of modern capitalism.  According to Smith, all of society benefits if businesses operate with a free hand in a system of competition.  Because a business owner wants to make more money, he or she (Smith did not think about “she,” actually) will do what can be done to lower costs, increase efficiency and produce a better product.  Customers will get lower costs and better products.  The business owner makes money.   “He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention,” wrote Smith.  Everybody wins!   Happy ending!

But that doesn’t work in the classroom.  (Some would argue it doesn’t really work that well as a system of economics, but that’s a different issue).

To keep the reading more manageable, I’ll lay out my arguments over the next few blogs.  Tomorrow, I’ll post Barlow’s Law:  “Students Don’t Want Their Money’s Worth.”

(It’s my blog, so I was going to name the law after myself.  But I have to admit that I first remember hearing this phrase many years ago in a conversation with the late Jack Barlow, who was a history professor at Huntington University.  So I shouldn’t really name it after myself.  Rats.)