Yet too often, conversations about education go off-course and veer solely into the economics of education, and not just with business officers. Topics quickly move from mission to a financial analysis of return on investment. It has become common to read or hear that schools should focus on preparing kids to excel on college admissions tests. Colleges, in turn, should focus on helping graduates land high-paying jobs. When that does not occur, our education system is broken or overpriced—or so goes the current thinking.
This unfortunate tendency crystallized for me when I read a blog by Christopher B. Nelson, president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., in the Washington Post.
In "Why We Are Looking at the 'Value' of College All Wrong," Nelson asserts that "the lens of economics distorts our judgment about the true worth of higher education." The same lens distorts our sense of the value of independent schools. His argument is rooted in the value that economics places on "scarcity." As students of economics understand, when a commodity is scarce, its value grows. With knowledge and other benefits of education, the converse is true: The more it is shared, the more it grows.
In higher education, as well as within independent schools, a common debate asks: "Is this school worth the tuition?" "What is the ROI?" "What will my son or daughter get after they graduate?" From purely a consumer standpoint, these may be reasonable questions, but neither independent schools nor most colleges and universities design education to deliver value in those terms. Nelson refers to this habit as "our obsession with quantification." It reminds me of an Einstein quote: "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
Nelson goes on to say something that I have believed since my undergraduate years: That education "is not information transfer," though that certainly happens through education. Instead, "The educated graduate is an independent learner, able to seek out answers to whatever questions arise, and able to direct his or her own learning in accordance with the challenges that life presents in the circumstances of his or her own life." Our economic lens, as Nelson puts it, "fails to speak to education's proper end—the maturation of the student." Hear, hear!
In my role at NBOA, I often think that if the conversation with a school considering NBOA membership focuses on dollars and cents, then we're having the wrong conversation. My sense is that independent school admissions professionals feel much the same way when meeting with families who are considering their schools. "ROI" is a reality, but it's not the point.
As business officers, we tend to look at everything through a financial lens because that's very often what our schools need us to do. But I believe it's critically important to remove that lens when we look at the value of our independent schools. This value isn't captured on a spreadsheet, but rather is embodied within the students at our schools.
