Colleges and Universities
In the last few weeks I have found myself on the campuses of many colleges and universities. Some are Pitney Bowes customers, some have been venues for meetings I have attended, some are campuses I have shown my 16-year-old son, who is starting to look at colleges, and I have visited my 21-year-old son, who is a student at the University of Southern California, and my 14-year-old daughter, who took a summer class at Princeton University. I also had occasion to visit the University of Wisconsin and Harvard Law School, the schools from which I received my degrees.
I have several observations:
- All of these schools have more global reach than ever. Our primary and secondary education systems are inferior to many other countries, but we still are a magnet for undergraduate and graduate college students from around the world, especially from the Asia-Pacific area. I also am seeing an increasing number of students from Eastern European countries - who not only come to school here, but are most likely to be filling the summer jobs at resort areas and in big cities that used to be filled by American students.
- There is an incredible amount of construction going on everywhere on every campus I visit. Interestingly enough, some of the buildings being replaced are newer than some of the buildings being renovated. At the University of Wisconsin, some of the buildings built in the 1950’s and 1960’s are being demolished, whereas older buildings are being renovated. I was also surprised to learn that much of the Harvard Law School is under reconstruction and renovation and will be resituated within Cambridge over the next few years. I get piecemeal announcements informing me of these events, but its impact is much more dramatic when you actually see it happening.
- The communities surrounding these schools, as well as the school buildings themselves, evidence a far more upscale college and university population than was the case when I was in school. One indicator of this fact is the spending power marketers assume that students have. At one of the mailrooms I visited in June, the number of undeliverable direct marketing catalogs filled several large postal sacks, and many of these catalog marketers were upscale retailers that clearly believed that college students had sufficient disposable income to buy very expensive items.
- Students also have expectations about amenities far beyond anything we had. They expect state-of-the-art technology in their dorms, apartments, classrooms, libraries, and laboratories. They also expect to have the latest and greatest consumer electronics tools, and have laptops, cell phones, PDAs, and broadband television reception. They are also far more fashion-conscious and frequent a better class of eating establishments than we did. As a student at the University of Wisconsin, I used to go to a Rennebohm’s drug store diner and coffee shop for breakfast (images of famed drug store). Today, someone in my situation would be going to a Starbucks and paying many times as much for a simple cup of coffee. Students also expect far more convenient services like dry cleaners, copy and print shops, beauty salons, and even mailing and shipping centers to be on campus and open long hours.
- Colleges and universities are very fragmented and siloed organizations. Departments and schools do their own separate fund-raising, and share relatively few resources with other parts of the university. In fact, even the centralized print and mail centers of large universities find that much of the work they should be doing is outsourced by individual departments or faculty members to print and mail shops outside the university. One of the most frustrating consequences of this fragmentation, according to many people familiar with colleges and universities, including parents of other students, is that it is very difficult to get a complete understanding of how much has to be spent to educate a college student. There are multiple expenses, and they are invoiced in a very fragmented way to the students and their parents.
- The fragmentation relative to how universities operate is one explanation of why tuitions just keep increasing in good and bad times. In addition, policy towards tuition increases from the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Another explanation is that colleges and universities spend heavily to build their capability to attract top students from around the world. Unlike governments, which cannot keep raising taxes, or businesses, which are subject to severe competition, great colleges and universities are perceived to have a lifetime economic value for students who graduate from them that enables them to charge what the market will bear.
- Contrary to the popular view that mail is going away, colleges and universities aggressively market themselves to younger and younger students through direct mail. My 16-year-old son gets postcards, letters, and even think marketing kits every day, and my 14-year-old daughter has even started to get some postcards from a few colleges and universities. They also market heavily to alumni, to parents of current students, and to other potential donors. Much of their communication with students is web-based, such as the description of courses and the grade announcements, but the marketing material is still heavily paper-based, and there is more of it than ever.
October 26th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
I am very impressed with your articles on the environment,schools,healthcare ect.
I just happen to have a very unbusy Friday in The Spokane Call Center. Thank you for your refreshing insights into global and national issues.
Sandy B
November 8th, 2007 at 2:37 am
Back in Wisconsin after 23 years “in the wilderness”, I was looking up some old friends and associates, and it seemed to me it might be amusing to see if my former debate partner ca. 1966-67 or ‘67-’68 was still around. He at the very least shares your name, and some of your background, and looks very much like you. I thought he would go far. I wonder: is it you? I think it is, though the bio puts you a year or two younger than I anticipated he would be. My e-mail is mg34@earthlink.net, just in case this merits an answer.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Really a great blog Mike and I agree that the educational system in our country is inferior to our global competitors, especially in science and engineering. As a student of engineering and relatively recent graduate (RPI 2003), I’m startled and concerned to read that the American workforce is now getting lazy and there is an “ambition gap” between our young Americans and the youth in Asia (favoring the youth in Asia). Studies now show that while our 4th graders are among the top students globally in math and science, American high school seniors are close to the bottom of the list in industrialized nations!
What kind of impact do you think this will have on American innovation and our the future of the US economy? It’s becoming easier and easier to offshore R&D to lower cost channels and have a truly global workforce. In fact its probably advantageous to do this and have Researchers working globally 24×7. Do you see this as an issue for America’s youth and our workforce overall? And lastly, is there anything our government can do about improving the school systems and keeping America at the forefront of innovation?
January 7th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Chris -
I believe that the availability of off-shore capabilities will alter work done in the U.S. It will destroy some opportunities for Americans, but will create others. Ultimately, those service occupations which require deep cultural understanding of employees, customers, and communities will not only stay here, but will expand as services expand. For existing workers accustomed to doing a job unconnected from public contact, like cerain categories of software programmers or factory workers, the change in available jobs and careers will be frightening, because they have not grown up with the interpersonal skills that permit them to succeed in the new world. For others who either have been trained in interpersonal communication or who are willing to be retrained, there is more opportunity than ever.
Sales positions, in particular, are costing all companies more because of the shortage of people that can do them. If I were to recommend a career with virtually no risk of obsolescence, I would recommend sales. It may be that what someone sells today will not be what they sell 10 years from now, but the need for someone to acquaint business and consumer customers with potential solutions to their day-to-day problems, and help them select or design the right potential will never go away.
As for your comment about the motivation of young people, I am not worried about an “ambition gap.” I have three children, ages 21, 17, and 14. They do not lack for ambition. In fact, in talking to them and their contemporaries, the regular exposure they have to children who have been born outside the U.S. or who have spent significant parts of their lives outside the U.S. has given them a greater sense of the reality of global competition than I had when I was growing up. They have grown up in a financially comfortable environment, but they want to succeed on their own merits, and to have fulfilling careers. From the survey work I have seen through my Catalyst board membership and other sources, my parental experience is relatively typical. I am very optimistic about our young people.
Relative to the government’s role in education, I am less optimistic. The fundamental problem with government relative to any complex problem, whether it is education or health care, is that government appears to exist to serve its employees, not the public. If employees are motivated to serve the public, then government does an excellent job. If not, the public loses, especially given the fact that government workers are unionized and can exert a lot of leverage on the people that supervise them. Similarly, the civil service system which covers the vast majority of government workers, including management, combined with the multiple layers of employment rights that have been given to government employees, have significantly compounded the difficulty of getting rid of under-performing government workers. My experience with government employees is that the vast majority of them are highly-dedicated, very knowledgeable, very moral, and passionate about serving the public. Unfortunately, they are trapped in systems that under-reward good performance, and protect bad performance.
With respect to education, I have seen excellent models, like the Achievement First Charter Schools in Connecticut and New York, but those wonderfully-performing systems have been attacked in every way possible by defenders of the status quo. We need to cause government money to go to organizations that deliver excellence in performance, like Achievement First, not to dole out money uniformly to good and bad performing school programs and systems.
-Mike