Dichotomy of Grades for Substance Quality or for Money

¶ … Business Model' of Educational Teaching

The Business Model of Education: High Monetary Compensation at the Expense of Quality Teaching

The commodification of goods and services offered in a capitalist society is apparent in today's American society, as more and more institutions try to increase monetary funds for the improvement of these goods and services offered. More often, institutions offering services to the people, which tends to commodify these services, and examples of these are access to educational materials, library access, and other services that used to be availed of free by the people.

The need to commodify access to 'supposedly-free' services such as educational materials and formal education is slowly being converted into goods being sold in the 'educational market.' This means that the higher the quality of material and service accepted/availed of, the greater fee one must pay to receive these services/materials.

This is the main thrust of Lynne Drury Lerych's essay entitled, Meeting the Bottom Line in the College Biz, a discourse on the development of America's educational system as a form of commercial service, whereby the highest payer shall be granted superior quality of education. This issue, of course, stemmed from various factors, which are mainly motivated by the laws of economics, as Lerych posits. This essay looks at the author's arguments against the "business model" of education that she illustrates and identifies in her discourse. Furthermore, a discussion and analysis of the educational system, quality of education, and the quality of teaching are studied to argue the stance that in the present educational system of America, what prevails is the principle that quality teaching is equated with monetary compensation, i.e., quantity (monetary compensation) is preferred and subsisted to at the expense of quality (passionate teaching and yearning for learning).

Lerych's position in the article is already established at the first part of her essay, as she describes herself as "the teacher from hell, the one whose classes students approach in wide-eyed panic because they're too hard." She describes herself as such because she considers herself a rarity, a different kind of teacher who considers teaching as not only a method of imparting and sharing knowledge, but also as an activity that also involves learning and rigor. It is evident that the author is considered as a "terror" teacher, giving value to hard work as synonymous with that of quality work.

Lerych goes on to compare herself with other professors/instructors in the tertiary level of education. Among her colleagues, she distinctly notices how they react with the author's "selflessness" in teaching her students. This is because, according to Lerych, in today's educational system, "working hard is suspect if the rewards aren't immediate and obvious. Academic standards are in disrepute. A professor who sets the bar high is seen as an obstacle by students looking for a quick route to a degree, and an inconvenience by administrators with an eye toward the bottom line."

This "bottom line" is explained through an illustration, which she terms the "bank model" of education. In the business model, where quantity is preferred over quality -- that is, the most number of students you have enrolled in your class, the greater compensation is there for the professor/instructor. This means that monetary compensation becomes an ideal instead of quality teaching (for the teachers) and quality learning (for the students). For Lerych, there now exists what she calls "edu-preneurship," where there is a "clash between academic standards and capitalism," as teachers seek to increase their pay by enticing students to enroll in their class because of the ease in the teacher's standards on student performance. This results to mediocrity not only in teaching, but also in the quality of the professor's teaching, which, in turn, affects the educational system, making all its elements altogether mediocre.