California is not exactly known for its good public schools.

Yet, some of its private schools aren't so hot either. Listen to this! A phony school in Sacramento was giving phony high school diplomas, for a hefty price, to Hispanic immigrants. They advertised that it would lead to a valid diploma (not true), help then get into college (right!), find better jobs, and get financial aid.

All of this of course was a ruse.

However, their textbook was the best part. The curriculum consisted of a slim workbook, riddled with errors. Here are a few:

~ The U.S. has 53 states, but the flag hasn't yet been updated to include the addition of the latest 3 - Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico.

~ WW II began in 1938 and ended in 1942

~ There are 2 houses of Congress - The Senate and the House; one is for the Democrats and the other is for the Republicans.

The organization claimed to graduate 1500 students every 10 weeeks from 78 schools across the country.

A consumer protection lawsuit seeks full restitution for the students, $32 million in civil penalties, and a permanent injunction against the school CEO.

Can you believe it?

Can I believe it? Well, was the address of the school 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C, or Crawford, Texas?

Whenever I have published papers or book chapters, my manuscripts have had excrutiatingly tough peer reviews. And, I have had to answer each one, in detail, no matter how inane they were. Often, I have had to find data to convince the publisher that the peer reviewer is wrong. It is a lot of work.

How, then, could these mistakes have gotten through? The publisher must be incompetent!

How, then, could these mistakes have gotten through?

Textbook publishing is not a peer-reviewed process. It's more a sinecure. It's big corporations like Enron sticking it to school districts and taxpayers with very little regard to the consequences. Speaking of mistakes in textbooks, there's that Georgian school board who voted to put warning labels in biology textbooks denouncing the heresy of evolution. Education is big business in this country, especially at the university-level. It's sickening.

Education is big business in this country, especially at the university-level. It's sickening.

jheem, isn't it rather naive to think that education shouldn't be a business? I think that has been a problem in the past. Educators have often gone off with new programs, projects, etc., half-cocked, not knowing good business practices. The result has often been failure and loss of great amounts of money. A reasonable business sense is important, though of course political interference, as in your example, is unacceptable. Yes, I had heard about that absolutely ridiculous situation about evolution, and I believe it has happened in others states as well (Missouri maybe?).

Now, as far as textbooks, I have been involved in textbook writing in nursing. I can assure you, my submissions have always had peer reviewers, experts in my field, who have carefully reviewed all my textbook chapters. Similarly, I have reviewed a number of nursing texts myself. I doubt that nursing texts are any different from others at the university level, though I could be wrong.

I don't know about textbooks in elementary and secondary education, though.

isn't it rather naive to think that education shouldn't be a business?

I see no evidence that businesses can run our universities better than academicians. None what so ever. I think if we want this country to be a success, we need to able to offer a good education to anybody who shows signs of intelligence, and not just somebody with a checkbook in hand.

As for the textbooks. the one you inaugurated this thread with was for a private (i.e., business as usual) school. No board of edumacation there. Of course, I could just be being cranky again, as is my wont.

Georgia was quick to delete its warning labels on evolution..

Common sense prevailed.

Going back to the original post, I'd suspect the creators of the text book of intentionally perpetrating a joke at their potential students' expense.

Quote "...I see no evidence that businesses can run our universities better than academicians....

Indeed. But neither is the converse true.

I have worked in academic instutions and been involved in examinations for many years and I am convinced that a balance of skills is needed.

Academics who have never worked in a commercial environment often have no concept of what it means to have customers, who pay money, and whose needs must be satisfied.

Those with a commercial background, who have never been involved with academe, usually have no idea of what it means to have to research, analyse and instruct in such a way as to improve the overall standards of knowledge and competence.

In the UK we have a two-tier education system and the general consensus here at present is that the commercial sector (private schools and colleges) produce better results than the state sector. I don't suggest that proves anything - but it's a fact that might be relevent.

In the UK we have a two-tier education system and the general consensus here at present is that the commercial sector (private schools and colleges) produce better results than the state sector.

Perhaps in certain fields that have a commercial exploitation that's obvious, but I doubt that they produce better students in fields that are not so easy to make a buck, er, pound out of. Could be wrong. It would be shame to only teach subjects for gain, but that would be the current model in business-education. I've worked in the computer industry and taught CS at a local unveristy, and have noticed that modern universities and businesses have a similar approach to most things, i.e., cluelessness and bombast. It's just that the (financial) stakes are higher in business and the pettiness is grander in academia.

I think if we want this country to be a success, we need to able to offer a good education to anybody who shows signs of intelligence, and not just somebody with a checkbook in hand.
jheem, of course I agree with that comment. However, having a business acumen doesn't mean that universities have to exploit academics just to make money. I suspect we are on the same side here. What I meant was that I have seen universities making ridiculous decisions that cost lots of money because they had no business sense nor people with a business background running the place. Academics with PhDs in biology often don't know how best to use the dollar so that many students will be attracted from all walks of life and given a superb education. That is my goal here!

Let me give you an example of something I experienced in academia. In order to get a new printer for my office, I HAD to go through the university's buyer. It would be $1,000. One thousand dollars is a lot in a school of nursing, so I was told I had to use the central printers. That meant, when I had confidential papers to print (such as tenure decisions or student grievance committee results), I hit "print," literally flew up 2 flights of stairs, down a long hall, into the printer room, in an attempt to retrieve the copy before others saw it. There were often not enough staff present (again because of poor budgeting of resources) so that someone could retrieve confidential papers for me. Further, if I had a 20-page manuscript or 50-page syllabus to print off, oftentimes several other faculty members had that to do as well. Our papers would get mixed together, we'd have to print many times in order to get all parts, and we wasted much time standing by those central printers. All because the university had made some lamebrained deal with some printer company where we could only buy their majorly expensive printers!

I said that I would be happy go to Office Max myself and buy a printer for $125, install it, and then I could work so much better. No. Those were the policies. I had to stick to them. It is no wonder I left academia.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

$125.00 printer for $1000.00

Yes, this is standard operating procedure in business, and quite silly. My wife who has an MBA in accounting once described to me the "logic" behind this practice, but I don't believe it for a minute. The larger the business, the more stupidly they act. This is a case of a university running itself like a business. Sheesh. But I'm pretty sure we agree on this as you say. I'm not saying all businessmen are fools, (mainly because I am one at the moment) and that all academicians are saintly brainiacs, (I've known a few who couldn't balance their checkbook if their lives depended on it), but that many business practices are assinine or without ethics (cooking the books a la Enron et al.).

Now, as far as business decisions dumbing down education, I have seen that too.

When I was a professor at a university, their business gurus decided that the fine arts program wasn't bringing in enough money. Never mind that the business school, the law school, and the medical school were more than covering for them (and happily)... they made a business decision to cut the fine arts department.

Well, there was an outcry, not just in the university, but outside the university. People wrote letters to the Chicago Tribune, and if I recall, the Chicago Tribune even wrote an editorial lambasting them. That was enough to convince the powers that be to retain their excellent fine arts department. That was a success story, but I am sure those are few and far between.

Whatever model is chosen for education, commercial or academic, you end up with institutions filled with people; all intelligent, flawed, fallible, inconsistent, emotional, social people. If the system is to work it must reward those who contribute positively to the end product -- education.

A model for education won't work if it allows companies to turn a profit without providing education. Ideally, a free market forces education businesses to compete for market share by providing 'better' education. In reality they only have to convince the market that they provide a better/faster/cheaper/more accessible product. There is a need for regulation. An education company must be constrained by more than just profitability.

Once an institution of any kind grows large enough it develops inefficiencies and loses its cohesive focus on an end product. Communication and coordination suffer. It becomes more rewarding for people to advance their own comfortable environments than to do what is best for the institution as a whole. Dilbert becomes disillusioned and frustrated; Wally makes himself comfortable; and PHB retains his powerbase despite complete cluelessness.

It doesn't give one much hope, does it?

It doesn't give one much hope, does it?

Perhaps part of that hope, Virge, is in competent regulation. In fact, after 20 years in academia, I have moved to regulation. I know that Australia, England, Canada, and the U.S. all have excellent processes of regulation, at least in nursing. Maybe, at least, that's the beginning.