Go Public ...
North Carolina State University has an annual budget of close to a Billion dollars - Which means that if it was a publicly traded company, it would be in the Fortune 1500.
However, most Public Universities in the US are struggling currently through the economic slowdown - A major problem for universities is the fact that several corporate sponsors have pulled the plug on donations, while Universities struggle to sustain a heavily bloated overhead (read, 80 year old tenured professors). The brunt of the effect is felt by the students with reduced funding, increased class sizes, shorter library hours among others.
Management of the University does leave a lot to be desired as obviously PhD's don't necessarily the best administrators. Gargs has plenty of gripes about the lack of graduate student funding at the University. I am sure everyone has their own university horror story, so lets not even go there.
What if Universities went public ?
One of my first posts was about the setting up of People Exchanges where people could list themselves on a stock exchange. Looking at the sorry state of funding in Universities in the US, I wonder if they need to maybe start listing on the stock exchanges as well.
Firstly, there would be a complete overhaul of management, with professional managers appointed by Wall Street. No more Chemistry professors managing budgets of a billion dollars.
Secondly, a bunch of departments will be shut down - Departments that dont show a profit (like Psychology for example) will probably lose all funding.
Thirdly, the concept of "tenure" will no longer exist - Professors who dont perform well, according to a certain well defined set of metrics will be "let go".
Fourthly, the relative performance of different Universities will directly influence the amount of funding they are able to obtain. The stock price of different universities will vary in line with performance on metrics such as graduation rates, average starting salary etc ..
Fifthly, departments such as Bio-Tech which have grown to become "Profit Centres" will benefit from such a move because of increased cash availability.
Why would people want to invest in Universities ? For several reasons ....
However, most Public Universities in the US are struggling currently through the economic slowdown - A major problem for universities is the fact that several corporate sponsors have pulled the plug on donations, while Universities struggle to sustain a heavily bloated overhead (read, 80 year old tenured professors). The brunt of the effect is felt by the students with reduced funding, increased class sizes, shorter library hours among others.
Management of the University does leave a lot to be desired as obviously PhD's don't necessarily the best administrators. Gargs has plenty of gripes about the lack of graduate student funding at the University. I am sure everyone has their own university horror story, so lets not even go there.
What if Universities went public ?
One of my first posts was about the setting up of People Exchanges where people could list themselves on a stock exchange. Looking at the sorry state of funding in Universities in the US, I wonder if they need to maybe start listing on the stock exchanges as well.
Firstly, there would be a complete overhaul of management, with professional managers appointed by Wall Street. No more Chemistry professors managing budgets of a billion dollars.
Secondly, a bunch of departments will be shut down - Departments that dont show a profit (like Psychology for example) will probably lose all funding.
Thirdly, the concept of "tenure" will no longer exist - Professors who dont perform well, according to a certain well defined set of metrics will be "let go".
Fourthly, the relative performance of different Universities will directly influence the amount of funding they are able to obtain. The stock price of different universities will vary in line with performance on metrics such as graduation rates, average starting salary etc ..
Fifthly, departments such as Bio-Tech which have grown to become "Profit Centres" will benefit from such a move because of increased cash availability.
Why would people want to invest in Universities ? For several reasons ....
- The Sports Teams
- Patents
- Marketing Opportunities
- Real Estate
- Philanthropy
Comments
Regarding management and administration, I am pretty sure that it is the professionally trained people who handle it. But again, profits come from effective research. You have to go and snatch research money from the pool. Unfortunately, this isn't happening at NCSU. It still works like a capitalist entity though, with some department heads making close to $200k a year with little to no actual classroom teaching and research load.
You cannot shut down "non-profit making" departments because then you would actually be making a dent on the actual mission of a University system.
NCSU's graduate school has a lot to work at, but I think one of the solutions is to start thinking simple. Get in some research money and endeavor to support all your students, rather than creating a salary divide even in those layers.
@gargs, as a student of the university, you are in no way beholden to the shareholders, just as currently you are in no way beholden to NSF - The shareholders make their money of other things, not you and your future earnings
Also, I suggest shutting down adv. literature (as an example) at NC State - And having all NC State students who want to do ad.lit courses do them from Chapel Hill - There might be a school that focuses only ad.lit, nothing else and they might be funded heavily by shareholders, because they are recognized experts in the field.
Its a downward spiral, if you dont have good profs, you cant get research grants, which means you cant hire good profs and so on.