It’s a good thing education doesn’t have to make a profit…

If educational institutions had to stay alive like real businesses do, we’d be long gone. What I mean is that a business has to stay on top of the current climate: economic issues, culture changes, customer/client needs, etc. If they don’t, they go under. If colleges and universities don’t, they applaud themselves as maintaining a long-standing tradition of excellence…and continue forever. Change is glacially slow…but then it’s logarithmic as well, which means that when you finally get that snowball started and rolling, it eventually picks up steam (ok, snowballs and steam don’t mix…stay focused here). Part of what I do at the college is show faculty the great things they can be doing that actually relate to the real world out there. Sometimes they get it, many times they don’t. It’s most often a major paradigm shift, and nobody handles that very well. But we have to keep trying…