What’s this world coming to when college graduates can’t graduate on Friday, throw back a few Yeager Bombs on Saturday, sleep it off on Sunday, start their “dream job” on Monday, and buy their McMansion on Tuesday?

Priceless!

Just what I needed to get my daily dose of snark.

And believe me, private business has its share of anti-technology folks. Check out David Green of Hobby Lobby ($2 billion in revenue) who refuses to allow scanners in his stores because “manager’s will spend their time looking at a monitor rather than on the sales floor.”

In my own company, there are those who think we don’t need to change an thing … ever.

Still, I bet you could trump all these stories with some from your faculty meetings! Higher Ed certainly does have some dinosaurs.

I think those are the types of attitudes that have so disconnected our system of higher education from the economic reality the last 30 years.

While there are some differences between higher education and other businesses, it is subject to supply and demand pressure. If it wasn’t, colleges could charge $100,000 per hour and enrollment wouldn’t suffer. Other businesses write off loses all the time – can we call them scholarships? Other businesses “kick back” plenty – it just isn’t so obvious, whether in the form of comps, or trips for their good customers, or special discounts to attract their preferred customer. Can you find an industry that doesn’t have a lobbyist? Every industry from avocado growers to zebra farmers has a lobby. The education lobby has some powerful lobbyists though and they definitely have the attention of lawmakers, I’ll cede that point for sure.

Having lobbyists and the favor of politicians doesn’t exempt higher ed from the laws of economics, though it does skew the situation. One reason costs continue to rise is that people are willing to pay them, governments are willing to allow “state” schools to raise them, and we continually hear how much more a degree-ed person makes in his/her lifetime.

Much of the demand is based on perceived value. Ivy League schools supposedly teach something magical that second or third tier schools don’t know. Wait a minute, that’s just marketing, much like every other business uses marketing to drive up its price structure. My strategic management professor in grad school taught everything Michael Porter teaches!

About the only degree that I can think of that the grads usually do work is accounting!

Second, if you find anyone who works in the field that they studied in college, I would be surprised. I can accept that you have an interest or curiosity in an area sufficient to achieve a college major in that area, but that bears little or no relationship to what you do to earn a living afterwards. Have we so seriously deluded our youth into believing that they can pursue what they are interested in, and it will provide them with a financially secure and comfortable life?