“Content Deflation” Part II: University of Chicago Felt the Heat

(Part I is here: How Competition Leads to “Content Deflation” in One Anecdote.  I suggest reading it first.)

What heat? the heat of what Chicago’s President Hugo F. Sonnenschein (in 1998), called “…the commodification and marketing of higher education…” He went on to say “…we can’t jolly dance along and not pay attention to them. One hears constantly from parents and students: ‘We are the consumer. We pay the tuition…”  This is a quote from a New York Times front page article http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/28/us/winds-of-academic-change-rustle-university-of-chicago.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm  Note the year: 1998.

Michael C. Behnke was a new vice president at Chicago and was hired to improve marketing and recruitment. He was also quoted in the article as trying to improve Chicago’s image.  So we see how marketing helps determine the curriculum.  I find it ironic that it was Robert Maynard Hutchins who said that,

“It is sad but true that when an institution determines to do something in order to get money it must lose its soul. … I do not mean… that universities do not need money and that they should not try to get it. I mean only that they should have an educational policy and then try to finance it, instead of letting financial accidents determine their educational policy.”

Fortunately, it seems that the Chicago faculty kept the reduction to a minumum, and I applaud them for that.  [Here is a NY Times article about what eventually happened University of Chicago Choses Cornell Provost – NYTimes.com.]The point of this post, though, is that no one is immune to “content deflation” once one competitor is willing to lose its “soul”.  That is because, as David Riesman said,

“…advantage can still be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions..Like any other interest group, the student estate often does not grasp its own interests, and those who speak in its name are not always its friends.”