Education From Corporations-Is This A Good Idea? 11
gizmoguy4242 asks: "notHarvard.com is
pioneering a new business model by offering free educational courses in an effort to 'attract new customers, reduce customer
acquisition costs, keep them on-site longer, and drive revenue.'
As an example, Metrowerks set up a site called 'codewarrioru.com'
where participants can 'learn how to program in C++' and gain other
valuable skills. 'The university site is driving revenue by giving users a context in which they can both learn about the
product and make purchases when appropriate.' Obviously, the notion of free, quality education is attractive, especially in a 'do-it-on-your-own-time' medium. On the other hand, the privatization of education raises all sorts of philosophical questions: can corporations -- whose fundamental interest is economic -- maintain academic neutrality when doing so negatively impacts them? Can they be trusted to present educational ideas from an objective standpoint, or is this the precursor to corporate-driven thought control?"
This might not be a bad idea, actually. (Score:2)
First of all, I am from Texas, know Texas, and love Texas. Texas, however, contrary to what people think, is not that well off. Wealth is unevenly distributed and until recently (the last ten years) was pretty well restricted to natural resource and agriculture, with retail and manufacturing bringing up the rear. I know lots of people in their 70s and 80s who got an education courtesy of the US Army. That was all that they could get. Until pretty recently, the Army was the best ticket to a better life for most of rural Texas, which was most of the state until the mid-1970s. Let me make that a little clearer -- Vietnam seemed less likely to kill you than East Texas within my lifetime (I am 34) and people CHOSE to go to Vietnam because they might possibly get a better life out of the Army and they would definitely not get anything if they stayed put. This wasn't that long ago.
People these days, I think, do not understand poverty. In Texas, in rural areas, in the mid-1970s, about 20% of all people still used outhouses. That was they way it was. One of my favorite teachers in undergrad was a nice man from Amarillo. I asked him why he had chosen Tech as opposed to SMU (curiousity, really), and he said that at the time he went back to school, after the end of his time in the Army after WWII, he had a wife, a baby, and 20 dollars to his name. The bus fare to Lubbock was $8 (or something like that -- this was a few years ago) and the bus fare to Dallas was $30. And that was that. It was that absolute.
One of the more profound changes in my lifetime in Texas has been that education has generally gotten a lot better for most people. For the smart kids and for the better neighborhoods, it has gotten a lot worse. But no matter how much the present state of public education in Texas is, you have to remember that within the last ten years one of the larger expenditures for a lot of smaller school districts (after football, of course) was rat poison. Today, most kids in Texas are likely to have at least a chance to be able to read and write, as opposed to the mid-1970s. Only 40% of Texas is literate at a high school graduate level, and only 70% is literate at a 6th grade level. That is starting to change.
Make no mistake -- education in Texas is awful. Perhaps not as bad as, say, Albania or Haiti, but I don't think that anyone is served by mincing words. It sucks. But it is better than the alternative. I know for a fact that it is, and I am reminded every Saturday when I volunteer at the adult literacy program here in Plano.
So, despite the idiot liberals who wrecked what few standards existed and made firing teachers who were funtionally illiterate nearly impossible and completely castrated standardized testing and honors programs, the situation for most people is a little better because they are more likely to be able to read and write now than before.
Lesson (for me, anyway): Learning that allows you to learn (i.e., reading and basic math skills) is a good thing. The alternative is pretty brutal. No matter where that learning comes from, if you can use it, get it.
Second, I have watched the magic of auditing change the world in many ways. That seems like a weird statement (and I don't mean something weird and Scientology-ish, I mean GAAP-approved finacial accounting audits), so let me explain a little:
-- People want more efficiency.
-- Historically, public services were hard to audit for efficiency and not that cooperative.
-- Lots of money got wasted.
-- As computers got cheaper and faster, people were better able to keep track of activities, like issuing food stamps both at the point that they were issued and at the back end, figuring out things like fraud.
-- Between things like the Lone Star Card (used instead of stamps) and actual audits of state agencies, we are actually getting close to our money's worth in Texas (considering that we employ people so stupid that they would be out of their depth in a parking lot puddle, you have to expect less, of course).
So, as the cost of really tracking the money gets lower and lower and the metrics for figuring out whether or not stuff works (like forcing the poor to get the damned kids vaccinated, and figuring out how to do that), the system as a whole gets more efficient.
Looking away from the public arena for a second, many of the benefits that were once only available for a lot of money have gotten much cheaper, primarily because the cost of delivering them has dropped. Case in point -- I have a company called ADP do my paycheck for my company. For a very low cost, they give me a 401k as well. Several years ago, that would have been prohibitively expensive for all but larger companies. The cost of things like this has steadily dropped over the last few years. To use other example, look at discount brokerages. Not even on-line traders, just being able to get an account to buy stock with $500. Not that long ago, you would have been laughed out of ML or Dean Witter or a brokerage.
Yes, most of this is the result of the US free market and so on, and the dynamism that makes the capitalist world turn. There is a problem applying to education, though. The liberals whom I love so much have made it next to impossible to push people, track kids by IQ, grade hard, punish/remove the druggies and nutcases, and so on. So, the odds are that kids will not have been challenged and thanks to the liberals and their propensity to sue, that isn't likely to change until the bulk of the people get so pissed off that they run the bastards out of town. Given that the fat, happy, and stupid baby boomers, in Texas as everywhere, aren't doing a damned thing, this will take a while. In the meantime, while the rest of public policy has to deal with meeting pretty clear standards, education coasts, because the metrics to graph how crappy the job they are doing really is aren't there.
The more corporate-sponsored education spreads, the more the metrics to see what works will evolve. Just like Blue's Clues evolved from Sesame Street, the goal of successfully cramming in the information will make people return to figuring out how to teach people well, fast. There you go, instant metrics. And then we can pin the bastards to the wall.
Lesson: This will not get rid of traditional education and will probably help education evolve (as most things do under environmental pressure) towards greater efficiency. Which is what we have needed for, oh, since the last major attempt to impose standards for public education was defeated in 1922.
There's already a profit motive. (Score:4)
If there aren't enough full-pay students, then there have to be cutbacks in the amount of financial aid the college gives; and if that gets cut back, the college winds up serving fewer and fewer students. And since the cost of running the college is amortized over the entire student body, if the student body shrinks, rates go up--sometimes dramatically.
When I applied at my alma mater, it was considered to be a very selective school. The average ACT score was a 28 or so, and SATs were similarly high. Over the last several years, financial pressures have forced the college to lower its admission requirements until it is no longer a selective college--basically, "if you graduate from high school and you're a full-pay, we will walk into Hell itself if that's what it takes to get you in the door".
Has the academic mission been corrupted by money, and the financial crunch which all educational instututions find themselves in? Damn straight. Is it anybody's fault? Not really, no. It's just one of the big rules of life. Money changes everything; if you have money, you have a lot more options than if you don't have money.
If corporations want to offer education, will the education they offer be affected by their profit motive? Yep. Just like the students they accept will be dictated by their target markets.
But where Metroworks U. might be affected by "if they aren't buying $500 a year of Metroworks products, kick 'em out, and if their OS is a platform which we don't support, don't accept 'em", private colleges say "if they aren't filling our coffers with $X, decline to invite them back for another year."
Nonprofit institutions have to worry about the bottom line, just like everyone else.
Education is Anathema to corporations (Score:1)
Education is the process by which one learns to learn - to sort information, to test, to enquire, and to synthesize.
I do not mean to denigrate training, as it is useful when done correctly ( Not 'training' as in "We'll come to your site and give you the documentation for an extra $10,000" - actual focused learning). But it is not education, and those who want you to think it is are out to destroy education without a fight.
Education leaves the educated with the ability, and sometimes the compulsion, to investigate and analyse. Dangerous - what happens if they start to question the advertising, or test claims?
What corporations want is a population smart enough to push the right button, but too dumb to wonder why.
It might not be that big of a conflict of interest (Score:1)
A company can perform alturistic deeds for a variety of reasons, such as good PR. MS contributes a lot to primary and secondary schools which result in nice press releases and commercials with sweater-wearing CEOs that give you the warm and fuzzies. This kind of educational contribution is relatively cheap for them, and it helps soften their image (particularly in MS's case when they are facing antitrust hearings). Westinghouse used to be well-known for their sponsorship of their world-famous annual highschool science competition (which they have recently dropped sponsorship after many decades, but has been picked up by Intel).
Another reason a company might become involved in education is to ensure a technically-literate workforce from which they can hire people. This issue has come up in the US (and I suppose other regions of the world) because the creation of new technical jobs is supposedly out-pacing the number of technically-trained graduates. This can take the form of multiple companies joining together to lobby the government for more educational $$ or higher educational standards, or companies might sponsor graduate student research.
The above are a couple of examples of the ways corporate involvement in education can take place. Another way, which I presume is the motivating factor behind the article's description of Metrowerks's CodeWarriorU, is product familiarity. Anyone who has been in a college or university bookstore knows the amazing discounts (I've seen 75% and higher) one can get on developmental tools such as the MS Office suite, MS Visual Studio, the old Boreland compilers, etc. Simply put, if you get college students using VisualC++ in college, what software developmental tool do you think they'll want to use in their post-graduation job if they are given a choice? Metrowerks is in the position where they can teach pure ANSI C++ and not even push their product if they wanted to, because just the fact that the students are using Code Warrior and are getting comfortable with it, that is all the selling they need to do. Sure the conceptual jump to VisualC++ probably isn't all that great once you know Code Warrior, but why bother if you already own CW and are comfortable with it?
Tricks of the trade (Score:1)
They're trying to brainwash us.. I bet turner and gates are behind this crap!
Is NotHarvard Infringing? (Score:1)
Well, I guess it would depend (Score:2)
Mainly: WHO are the companies offering free education ?
Because, if they are offering scolarships to universities... Fine... I'm all for that.. Even though this will only benefit those who can actually cut the grade to get to the University in the first place, and are these people REALLY the most deserving of our help ? Or should we instead try to (as the texan pointed out in an earlier post) help fight "illiteracy and ignorance" ?
Education is a multi-headed beast, and as the saying goes: "A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing".
Personally I've grown up in a "wellfare-society" which means that even though my mom was poor, I was still able to go to school, highschool and eventually college. For this I thank the politicians who gave our society this great system. And if business can help us out by providing the system with the money an enducation costs, fine...
However, as someone else pointed out, businesses are in business for the money. So even though a little goodwill is worth a lot of money, a lot of money itself might be a better motive. This is why most companies offering ME free education today, are simply the companies that want me to buy their stuff. They will be most happy to teach me C++, but ONLY using their compiler, editors help engines and whatever, so that when I get back from "studying", this will be the ONLY C++ tool that I know. And most people, unfortunately, do not have the sense (or time, or inclination or whatever) to see this as a problem, they just say "boss, I want THIS program for writing C++ programs". And so the company has gotten it's cash back.
It might cost the company a few hundred dollars for a teacher plus an initial investment cost of the PC's and other equipment used (but most companies will do that as a tax writeoff or maybe even have the stuff from internal use, so this cost is probably not relevant) to teach as many as 10-20 or even 30 people at a DAY and even on a week-long course with lunch served (lunch is cheap), all of this will be coming back with just ONE purchase of a $1500 peice of software. if the software is more expensive, or comes with a "pay pr. month license" or they sell more than one pr. course, then isn't that money well spent ?
And ofcourse once a company decides to actually BUY the products being tought, then their employees "should not have to make do with the sub-standard free courses" and would be encouraged to buy the "real" courses.
THIS is the reality of it. And I'm not saying it's bad for me, bad for my company or bad for anyone. As a matter of fact, I enjoy some of these sessions, as I get free lunches, some time off from my otherwise busy schedule and at the same time I learn something new. And I KNOW how to use the new knowledge with the tools I have available, as such I'm a "bad costumer" to the companies offering free education. But having me on the course might infer some credibility to it in the eyes of the other students, and for this reason they will also invite me to the next free course they hold.
No I truly think that the free courses are nice, but in reality someone is paying and that in the end is always the consumer. So the question is: Should we then take as much advantage of this as possible ? A fairly dumb idea as most people do not have this option, and this might bring about the downfall of the concept.
Or should we instead try to see this in a larger perspective, as generating business for businesses, and therefore as a good thing for the comunities it touches ? I think so.
So even though the value of this education is limited to most people, I think that it's a great idea. On the other hand if I had the choice to take the money spent on this and use it to teach people with sub-standard reading skills, or math-ablilties, then I would agree that that MIGHT seem like a better alternative.
For reasons of lenght, I will not argue this point, suffice to say: Go study economics for a few years, maybe some company will offer it as "free education"
No objectivity (Score:1)
It's not a problem unless you make it one (Score:2)
Corporations have always been in the business of education and training. Big companies have internal training departments, online CBTs, libraries full of stuff, internal courses, etc. Smaller companies have some similar material on hand, and then they outsource other programs. Naturally, they try and direct training towards the company goals. For example, if I worked at M$, I'd probably be able to learn lots about how Windows can do everything I'd ever want it to do, <sarcasm> but very little about Linux. Not that I'd necessarily have time to take advantage of all this training, but if I really wanted or needed it, I could probably find something eventually. Similarly, if a company used only VisualAge as its IDE, I'd be able to learn that, but I wouldn't be able to learn anything else, unless it was on my own.
Moreover, at large companies, outsiders can sign up for courses on other products. For example, Rational has it's Rational University. And if someone publishes a (favourable) whitepaper related to using a company's products, it will be available from that company. This is how companies can encourage people to try their product, in the hopes that they will like it and buy it.
So is it a conflict of interest? Not if you're intelligent enough to know every bit of education is coloured with the teacher's or provider's own personal biases. Just because they want you to see things a certain way doesn't mean you have to. It's called critical thinking. Just because I learned how to code C++ with gcc in emacs doesn't mean I can't code C++ with the Borland compiler in vi -- once I learn vi. I can reapply the knowledge.
Okay, the unwilling to think and learn will never venture out of the one comfy environment they're in, but frankly, the unwilling to think and learn aren't (IMHO) worth protecting from the big, bad corporate interests.
Mind you, I think corporate interests at the university level and lower are not such a good thing. As the texan points out, some education is better than no education, but when you are first acquiring the ability to think critically, I think it's best to keep things as objective as possible. Obviously, that's difficult. For example, my first professional coding experience was in Java. So I initially preferred it to C++. Then I had to do some seriously hard-core stuff in C++ and became more familiar with it. So I came to like C++ as well, but given a situation where there was no disadvantage to using either language, I'd probably go with Java because it's easier for me. But I'd still use C++ if it were more appropriate, and frankly, nothing in the standard JDK beats the STL.
This free learning may start users on an initial preference for CodeWarrior and C++. So what? Anyone who's intelligent and willing to learn will eventually learn other tools. Eventually, they may appreciate, and possibly come to prefer these other tools. But this isn't a conflict of interest. The user gets to learn something, the company gets a chance to make sales, and as long users realises that the fact that they know and use a tool does not make it inherently superior to everything else, everyone's happy.
Corporate-Controlled Thinking (Score:1)
Corporate education offers choices (Score:2)
I've been reading this thread and see a common theme: corporations are selfish; corporations are driven by profit-motive; corporations will only educate you in the things that will make them money. My question to the people who say these things is: why is that bad?
Is there only *one* corporation out there? If corporate education catches on, and I believe it very well could, a variety of corporations would offer such education. They would train their students in the skills that they need their students to know. Sure it would be biased towards that company's profits. But if it is a wide-spread practice, the student has choices.
This scenario exists in today's University system. Different Univiersities have different specialties. Colorado State specializes in Veterinary Sciences, while University of Rochester specializes in optics. The same goes for liberal arts. Each school is known for what it teaches best.
Apply this concept to corporate education. Each company will teach what they need their students to learn to come work for them. A student then is faced with a choice. They decide who they would be interested in working for, what they would be interested in doing, and see if they can get accepted into that company's school. This provides them with education, and then probable job placement.
Of course, this is assuming that corporate education becomes a widespread practice. It has great potential. A few places offer it now, but imagine what great opportunities would present themselves it it became a staple part of the business budget. Twenty years ago, the same thing happened with PCs.
The key here is customized, specific, education. You *choose* what education you get by choosing where you go. It is just another step up past University. Why bother with all the extra electives?