All Posts Tagged With: "students"
Higher Education at a Crossroads
Higher education appears to be poised at one of those crossroads—unless you believe it’s been walking down the wrong road for years. The cost of going to college has skyrocketed. The competition from online and research alternatives and from entrepreneurial and social ventures after high school are siphoning students away. More are questioning the value of a college education and deciding that it’s just not worth it.
On his blog, Seth Godin lists five reasons he thinks higher education is about to crash and burn:
1. Most colleges are organized to give an average education to average students. We no longer live in an industrial economy that demands standardized students. In a networked, global economy, we need to teach students how to think critically, solve problems, work together, and be creative. Most colleges fail to do that for the majority of their students.
2. College has gotten expensive far faster than wages have gone up. Godin includes a chart that shows the inflation of tuition and fees compared to medical costs and the cost of living. Since 1978, tuition and fees have risen by a factor of 9.5, medical costs by a factor of 6, and the cost of living by a factor of 3.2. We hear a lot of outrage over medical costs, which suggests that outrage over the cost of college…
29Apr2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedDangerous Assumptions about Customers
One of the fundamental weaknesses I’ve seen in the dozens of organizations I’ve worked with is their assumption that they know what their customers require. I understand why they assume they know. They hear the compliments and complaints. Their customers buy what they are selling. Their patients receive services. Their students learn. Their constituents keep coming back. They interact with these customers, patients, students, or constituents daily. Of course they know what their customers require.
I remember helping a manufacturer early in its Baldrige application process. It was its industry’s worldwide leader and had been for several years. It worked closely with its distributors and had ongoing customer contact. It assumed it knew what each customer group required even though it had never formally determined those requirements or tested them with customers to make sure the lists were right.
When I presented my evaluation of its application to senior leadership, my first point was that it did not have a rock-solid understanding of customer requirements. I thought they were going to tear my throat out until the president interrupted and said he thought I had a point. As a result, the company hired a market research firm to close this gap. Two years later, it received the Baldrige Award.
The Baldrige model is a process model. The starting point for any effective process…
29Jul2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
