A Student Is Not an Input

By MICHELE TOLELA MYERS

RONXVILLE, N.Y. — Attend a conference of higher education leaders these days, and you will hear a lot of talk about things like brand value, markets, image and pricing strategy. In the new lingua franca of higher education, students are "consumers of our product" in one conversation or presentation and "inputs" — a part of what we sell — in the next.

It's easy enough to see why academia has gotten caught up in this kind of talk. We borrow the language of business because we are forced to operate like businesses. Higher education has become more and more expensive at the same time it has become increasingly necessary. As we look for ways to operate efficiently and make the most of our assets, we begin learning about outsourcing, for-profit ventures, the buying and selling of intellectual property.

And as the public is well aware, colleges and universities are now in conscious and deliberate competition with one another. We "bid for student talent," as the new language would put it, because we know that "star value" in the student body affects the "brand value" of the university's name: its prestige, its rankings, its desirability, and ultimately its wealth and its ability to provide more "value per dollar" to its "customers."

But there is something troubling about the ease with which these new words roll off our tongues. I pay attention to words and how we speak about things because language tells us a good deal about how we think and feel, and ultimately, how we act.

What are the implications of thinking of a college or university as a brand? We know that some people will pay anything for prestige brand names. And as a result, some children are under unhealthy pressure from the time their parents begin panicking about which nursery school they will go to. Yet, prestige sells, prestige provides value; we know it, parents and students know it. We at the colleges scramble to get up on that ladder.

A business professor told a group of us at one recent conference that to run a successful organization you had better make decisions on the basis of being "best in the world," and if you couldn't be best in the world in something, then you outsourced the function or got rid of the unit that didn't measure up. Have we really come to believe that we can only measure ourselves in relation to others, and that value and goodness are only measured against something outside the self? Do we really want to teach our children that life is all about beating the competition?

As we in the academy begin to use business-speak fluently, we become accustomed to thinking in commercialized terms about education. We talk no longer as public intellectuals, but as entrepreneurs. And we thus encourage instead of fight the disturbing trend that makes education a consumer good rather than a public good. If we think this way, our decisions will be driven, at least in part, by consumers' tastes. Are we ready to think that we should only teach what students want or be driven out of business?

Physics is hard, it is costly, it is undersubscribed. Should it be taught only in engineering schools? I don't think so. Should we not teach math because everyone can get a cheap calculator? Should we stop teaching foreign languages because English has become the international language? And what about the arts, literature, philosophy? Many might think them impractical.

I think we have a responsibility to insist that education is more than learning job skills, that it is also the bedrock of a democracy. I think we must be very careful that in the race to become wealthier, more prestigious, and to be ranked Number One, we don't lose sight of the real purpose of education, which is to make people free — to give them the grounding they need to think for themselves and participate as intelligent members of a free society. Obsolete or naive? I surely hope not.

Michele Tolela Myers is president of Sarah Lawrence College.