Volume and/or Value

Recently I was listening to a discussion of the healthcare problems of the country when one of the speakers commented that some of the problem in the US is caused by a system that pays for volume of patients seen and not the value of the healthcare received. My immediate thought was, "Welcome to my world". I have always thought that the problems of healthcare and education are in some ways similar. In both cases we demand the latest and best technology but don't want to pay the cost of staying on the cutting edge.

I feel that value is really the name of the game when it comes to education. While politicians and administrators tend to push degrees conferred after four or six years, the real measure of an education is the intellectual and practical skills the graduate has acquired.

The challenge is that it is very difficult to measure true value in education or in healthcare on a quarterly basis business cycle. Do you pay the doctor based on the number and percentage of patients in good health on January 1, April 1, July 1, and September 1. Does the faculty member get paid a percentage of each former students income?

To really solve the problems of higher education we need to focus on the value generated in the activities. Value to the student and value to the society that provides the lions share of the resources invested in the activity.

A colleague from a nearby university told me today about one of his fellow faculty members who upon seeing his section size go from 75 to 150 students said that given the workload he saw no option but to lower the standards, give memorization based questions, and pass more students in order to get tenure. As a taxpayer and an educator who cares about education and the future of my student and my society I wanted to scream. This tenure-bound faculty member has checked the wind and recognized that it blows in the direction of volume and value be damned.

T.S. Hall