What do Colleges and Drug Companies Have in Common?
Posted by Jonathan Hilley · Topics: Colleges, Disruptive Ideas · 1 Comments
Q: What will colleges and drug companies soon have in common?
A: Regulatory reform that puts the consumer first.
As Obama so powerfully says, “Change is coming to America.” And higher education institutions across the U.S. should be paying serious attention.
Today, Louis Soares and the Center for American Progress released a groundbreaking white paper on higher education. The idea:
Put the Student first in College.
Make no mistake: This is not a small change. This is a fundamentally new approach to the higher education market – a market plagued by 4,900 different suppliers, each with their own agenda, mission and performance record. Soares writes:
In most sectors of our economy, customer focus is paramount, as it should be in education, too. Customer focus could yield a more student-centric system through the development and dissemination of user-friendly ‘truth-in-education’ information that helps students make ‘best-fit’ choices regarding which education provider to select based on customer preferences such as: academic quality, price, convenience, learning style, beginning education level and the anticipated return on their investment in education.
As I noted in College is a Bubble, massive disruption is coming to providers of higher education. In this new paradigm, outcomes are of paramount importance. In this new paradigm, Institutions will have to ensure a positive ROI for their students or they will become increasingly irrelevant.
What will accelerate this change? Two things:
1. Greater transparency: Soares and the Center for American Progress are pushing for greater transparency:
The lack of good information about the quality and value of higher education is creating a situation in which student-customers bear most of the risk for their long-term investment in their own education with little insight into what would work best for them. Further, this information-poor environment prevents other investors in a students’ education—among them taxpayers and parents—from knowing if they are getting a reasonable return on investment.
With greater transparency comes answers to previously difficult-to-answer questions such as:
- If I am investing in an educational service, how do I know what I am getting?
- Which college will give me the best chance of getting a job?
This is a level of transparency that will arm students – and their parents – with immensely powerful information. Information so powerful that it will cause a massive shift in how schools are evaluated. This will be the equivalent of a 9.3 earthquake hitting the epicenter of higher education institutions.
2. Truth in advertising laws: Soares is also pushing for a College Customer Bill of Rights that enforces truth in advertising:
Soon, like drug companies, colleges and universities will be subject to rules that put the Student as a consumer in a regulatory scheme. Soon, colleges like Monroe will be punished for creating misleading advertising messages and promoting bullshit job placement rates. This is something I’m a big proponent of – especially when you consider college is likely the 2nd largest purchase decision you will ever make, just behind a home.
The Conclusion
Change is coming to America. This time, it’s coming to the providers of higher education. Are you prepared?
03 Nov 09
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