While interacting with colleagues in a higher institution, a senior colleague made a statement, which made a lot of sense to me, that “education is the only business where the customer is the product”. This is a profound reality if we are to look at education through the lens of business and marketing. It is therefore critical to re-engineer the system to take into consideration the activities that regulate the input, process and output of higher education institutions. Higher education constitutes a critical component in the society, but in most cases, does not live up to its own rhetoric (Barnett, 1997). The diverse nature of the coordinating components such as the divisions, discipline and culture, and the blending of capacity, infrastructure and content models a microcosm of the world. Per the words of Emile Durkheim, as referenced by Clark (1986), “it is rare to find an institution which is at once so uniform and so diverse…for it is only living things which can in this way, while fully retaining their identity, bend and adapt themselves to a whole variety of circumstances and environments” (p. xiv).
Adaptability therefore is fundamental in an evolving world, and should be the principle upon which higher education thrives. From a business perspective, the preparation of the products (students) for career should include efforts to equip students for career adaptability (Tolentino, Garcia, Lu, Restubog, Bordia, & Plewa, 2014).
I identify with higher education in the capacity of a growing researcher and doctoral student. My expression of bias is that it could be a waste of time and failure of a system to fulfill products that are not market ready, considering the trends in today’s market. There should be a dissolution of the frozen patterns of thought (Kofman & Senge, 1993), and the institution of collaborations between the market and the higher institutions to ensure that products are tailored to adapt to the demand of the evolving market.
It may not be a surprise if the objectivity of my thoughts are clouded. The reason could be that the administration may not be directly affected by the outcome, especially when the decision makers have little or no background in education (teaching and instruction) -not necessarily educational leadership.
Barnett, R. (1997). Higher education: A critical business. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Clark, B. R. (1986). The higher education system: Academic organization in cross-national perspective. Univ of California Press.
Kofman, F., & Senge, P. M. (1993). Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations. Organizational Dynamics, 22(2), 4-23.
Tolentino, L. R., Garcia, P. R. J. M., Lu, V. N., Restubog, S. L. D., Bordia, P., & Plewa, C. (2014). Career adaptation: The relation of adaptability to goal orientation, proactive personality, and career optimism. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 84(1), 39-48