Colleges Flunk Economics Test as Harvard Model Destroys Budgets

[jody]

Colleges Flunk Economics Test as Harvard Model Destroys Budgets (Bloomberg.com)

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- On a Thursday morning in March, the $32 million School of Management building at Simmons College in Boston is all but deserted. Three students lounge in armchairs facing floor-to-ceiling windows that look over the quad with its winding walkways and greening lawn; another makes photocopies.

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From Harvard University to California’s 3 million-student community college network, the American system of higher education is in turmoil. The economic crash is upending each step in the equation that families use to determine where students will spend four of their most formative -- and expensive -- years. Today is the deadline that most schools set to receive a decision from accepted applicants.

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Such mid-tier institutions may be forced to change what they do to survive. In the best case, they’ll merge with bigger schools, sell themselves to for-profit organizations or offer vocational training that elite colleges eschew, says Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst at the College Board. In the worst case, they’ll shutter their doors for good.

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“State universities have to think about how many resources they’re going to put into being a top-ranked research institution and balance that against their primary educational mission,” Boston University’s Brown says. “Every state wants its flagship university to be a top-20 research university. Obviously, the math doesn’t work.”

[MADem]

1. Simmons should turn that Management School into a teaching school.

Open up a free charter school for motivated, underserved students on the campus in that empty green building, in cooperation with the City of Boston, and use a combination of certified teachers and college students obtaining teaching certification -- a bit of symbiosis. You'd have a really high student to instructor ratio, and the teaching students would get some real-time classroom interface. It would give teaching students a good shot at seeing if they really do like "the classroom" before they waste their time.

Perhaps they could gear the charter school to something that Simmons excels in--they used to be big at Library Science back in the dark ages...

I don't understand why more colleges don't run schools--it would be a great opportunity, I think.