Investing in a New Education System for Colleges and Universities
The week before we went down to Nicaragua last month, I attended an advisory board meeting for the English Department of a local university in Florida. Among the topics discussed was the school’s system of teacher evaluations. (Once a year, teachers are rated by their students, their colleagues, and their departments.)
I asked about the carrots and the sticks. The benefits for the teachers were as expected: the satisfaction of being highly rated and the potential for greater raises in their salaries. The sticks were presumably the opposite. But the emotional sanctions were blunted by the fact that the ratings were not published. And when I asked about the maximum differential in dollar terms between receiving the best rating and the worst, I was shocked to discover it was only 2%.
“2%?” I repeated. “2%!”
I’ve always been interested in methods to improve employee performance. Over the years, I’ve read more books, essays, and opinion pieces than I can count. Whatever ideas I gleaned from them were processed through many earnest efforts at testing them. The conclusion that I finally came to was that there are only three truly effective ways to improve the overall performance of professional workers.
1. Every year, fire 10% to 15% of the worst-performing employees. (This was one of Jack Welch’s rules when he was running GE.)
2. Give large incentives (financial and otherwise) to the best-performing 10% to 15% of employees.
3. Push the most productive employees to be even more productive.
A college or university has two products to sell: its public reputation and the value of its courses. And the rating system the English Department is using now for its teachers (with a maximum financial benefit of 2%) will not improve either one.
The school can improve enrollment in certain classes by designing them to be more appealing to students. But many college teachers and administrators object to doing that because they believe – correctly, in my opinion – that the value of individual courses can’t be merely on their popularity. In terms of a general education (as well as a career orientation), some courses are definitely more valuable than others.
On my plane ride from Miami to Managua, I conjured up a new education system tailormade for the age of AI and all the life challenges that young people will be facing.
Here are some my ideas so far…
Education will be partitioned into three categories: specific knowledge; general knowledge and theory; and, for some subjects, performance.
Specific knowledge (the acquisition of facts and figures) will be taught entirely through AI systems to students on an individual basis. Specific knowledge grading will be done with proctored tests.
General knowledge and theory will be taught in lecture form by scholars incentivized by their enrollment numbers. General knowledge grading will be done with three oral examinations administered by practitioners trained to assess each student’s grasp of general knowledge and ability to convey it.
In addition to the lecturers and testers and graders, there will be a cadre of “student coaches” whose job will be to pay attention to any problems individual students may be having.
The big salaries, along with the big bonuses, will go to the lecturers, who will be paid a percentage of the “gate” they bring in. Seven-figure compensation for popular lecturers will be the norm.
To insert some top-down judgement into the curriculum, course credits will be decided by the faculty, with more points allotted to courses that are considered essential or important to a future career.
And finally, there will be no degrees. Just a hierarchy of certificates of accomplishment for each field of study.
It’s still a little foggy in my mind, but every day that fog seems to be lifting a bit. The way I’m feeling right now, I’m confident that the system I’m proposing here – or something very much like it – will be standard operating procedure for colleges and universities in America.
