Shifting the paradigm to better higher education

Undergraduates are consumers -- we consume food, beer and clothing with abandon. But we are much bigger and better consumers of higher education. Every year we spend astronomical amounts of money to have the right to consume college; we listen to lectures, attend classes, all in an effort to engage in a privileged environment. Yet we rarely think of ourselves as consumers -- but we would be much better off if we did, because we would demand something a whole lot different. But right now, we are the perfect type of consumer for our providers because we are largely ignorant buyers. For all the time and money we spend on education, we rarely question or challenge the quality and utility of the product we are provided with. That price tag is $120,000 plus four years -- and the truth is that what we pay is hardly worth what we receive. Here we aren't treated as consumers -- we pay for lots of things that have absolutely nothing to do with us -- and we think about these advantages in the vacuum of the experience itself with no regard to what we could have done outside of this system. Our dormitories can't accommodate our community, so we end up siphoning ourselves off into smaller, more homogenous groups that really defeat the whole idea of living in an integrated, diverse community. We pay for a lot of overhead. We pay for a multitude of graduate students' studies, and libraries that are becoming obsolete. We pay for executive education buildings, and a hospital that loses money. We pay for the right to not have adequate common computing facilities, and community outreach projects that aren't sustainable in the long run. We pay for researchers, and for speakers we can't hear because the auditoriums aren't large enough. We pay for classes that we can't truly sample before committing for an entire semester. Sometimes the educational product is great; but it varies with alarming degree. Some teachers care; others do not. But when a teacher is slacking, comes to class unprepared or is unwilling to accommodate discussion outside of class, we rarely complain. I've never heard a student say to a teacher who has been irresponsible: "Hey, you're wasting my money! I want a refund!" We always see education in absolute terms -- but never in relative terms. The friends we make, the good times we have, the things we learned, the personal maturation that shaped our four years. Guess what -- those things exist outside of college too. And maybe more strongly than they do here. Fun exists in the real world. Friends do too. We never think that we could have achieved all that without doing it here -- but we could have at a lower price. Just nobody ever tries. Part of the problem is that we, as undergraduates, never demanded to be treated as consumers. We are the victim of our own double standards. Sure, we buy things all the time that don't work the way we thought they would. However, when that happens, we usually commit to getting it fixed, letting the customer sales representative know how we feel. When it comes to almost any other product besides education, we are critical consumers. But the Penn name is so prestigious, so we put up with it. So at the first interview the natural response to the question "Why should I hire you?" should be "Because I went to Penn." Don't be surprised if you don't make it to the next round. Repeat to yourself: Penn doesn't open doors, you do. Ask yourself: Why is undergraduate education the way it is? The real response is: Because it is the way it is. Question: Why does it cost how much it costs? Answer: Because it costs how much it costs. And this is the basis -- the breeding ground -- for change, big change. Say it: Education is not as valuable as we think it is. We pay a lot for a little. Yet most readers will never agree with these statements -- they just don't see it that way. Some others might agree, shrug their shoulders, accept what they cannot change and move on. And maybe one or two readers will do something about it. Undergraduate education needs a revolution. Not from educators but from the best and brightest students, who, one day, will finally see education not as a fight for admission but as a product that they choose to purchase. Someday someone will build a model for undergraduate education that fits all the needs, dreams and desires of its buyers. They will do it at a fraction of the cost we pay today. And they will sell it to a world of business, politics and non-profit as a cost-efficient way, an evolutionary way to become educated. And whoever executes on it will have as much fun as we do, learn as much as we have, make the same quality of friends that we made -- but have revolutionized and invigorated and challenged the assumptions and paradigm that undergraduate education exists in now. And they will have created the purest, most true, most applicable new paradigm. The advancement of advanced thought. That is, after all, what liberal thought lives by.

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