Mark Higbee sent me a couple links to an article in the current Chronicle of Higher Education, “What Colleges Should Learn From Newspapers’ Decline” by Kevin Carey. It’s an interesting article. On the one hand, I think that Carey is right that if institutions don’t evolve/change and/or if academics just assume that universities will live on as they are forever and ever, then the future is not bright. On the other hand, I think universities are actually evolving/changing faster than Carey implies– at least I think places like EMU are changing.
There are a couple of other differences too. First, Carey suggests in the opening of his article that the danger higher ed faces is that it is in the same business as newspapers: communicating information. I don’t think this is accurate because “communicating information” and “educating students” are not the same thing. If they were the same thing, colleges and universities would have begun a slow and steady decline in the 15th century with the beginning of printing, mass media, widespread literacy, etc.
Second, EMU and most universities are “not-for-profit” entities. In fact, universities/colleges that are “for profit” are generally seen as “not really universities” at best (e.g., the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University) or swindlers and crooks (e.g., diploma mills, various “bartending colleges,” etc.). Sure, we need to “make money” to keep the doors open, but we don’t need to satisfy investors/stockholders, and our goal is not to make money. Newspapers, on the other hand, especially newspapers owned by huge corporations (which includes the Ann Arbor News and just about every other paper you can think of) need to benefit the bottom-line. Breaking even is not good enough.
Which makes me wonder: if newspapers had switched to a “not for profit” model, would they be in decline? If the Ann Arbor News had done all the things it needed to do to be like public radio/public TV, if they had twice a year fund-raisers and sought money from various endowments and grants and such, would they be going out of business?
Speaking of which: It’s fund raising time right now at WEMU. It’s a fantastic station that I think is even more important as a source for local news. Send in your pledges, people!
