The-Accountant-Jul-Aug-2016

PEN OFF
fee-paying courses in public universities?
The answer is no according to Larry
Zicklin, former chairman of Neuberger
Berman, a professor at New York
University’s Stern School of Business. He
points out that if faculty members assumed
larger teaching workloads, while doing less
research, universities could deliver a college
education at a fraction of its present cost.
And all that would be lost would be a
succession of what he sees as research
papers that are of only marginal interest.
Zicklin predicts that online education
and other free-market forces will most
certainly reverse this worrisome situation.
He also wonders if students should have a
say in how their tuition dollars are spent.
When he reads academic literature, all
too often by paragraph three he is lost in
a morass of quantitative analysis that is
far beyond not only his abilities but those
of almost every business person he has
ever met. In his view, professors in US
universities devote far too much of their
time conducting research and writing
about it in articles that only their peers
understand and too little time actually
teaching. As a result, their students are
getting progressively less for their money,
a guarantee of future serious trouble for
higher education. As someone said about
the North Pole, when you are there, every
direction is down. He thinks that the
American university system is on top of
the North Pole now and the sides are steep.
One solution? The value of a free market is,
after all, one of the things business schools
teach.
He gives an example of the extent to
which things are going wrong. A couple
of years ago, a valued faculty member who
was responsible for a prolific output of
Zicklin gives a second example: a
lecturer at another US university told him
how she was reproached by her co-author
for getting behind on their book. She tried
to explain her lateness by pointing out the
demands of her rigorous teaching load.
“Are you kidding me?” the co-author said.
“How can you teach that much and still get
your work done?” In other words, teaching
was not her job; research and writing was.
People in the US are constantly reminded
of the increasing cost of a college education
and of the debt students take on to obtain
a degree. According to the Chronicle
of Higher Education, approximately 20
million people attend college every year
and 12 million of them take out loans
to help pay for it. Outstanding studentloan
debt now stands at over $1 trillion,
divided among 37 million people. Of
them, according to the Federal Reserve,
The government in Kenya will spend 31% of its total 2016-2017
budget on education. For Kenya to compete against other countries
in the world, it is important that its population is well educated.
In 2015, the total enrolmentin (both government and private)preprimary
schools was 3.2 million, in primary schools 10.1 million, in
secondary schools was 2.6 million, and in universities 507,700.
financial research at a well-known business
school resigned. This caused great distress
within the college, as the administration
feared that the school’s rankings would
suffer because it would no longer be
associated with his scholarship. But while
he was the school’s most successful scholar,
he certainly did not teach anything related
to his research. How practical was that
research anyway? Zicklin has worked in
the financial area for fifty years and he
didnot have a clue as to what his most
recent articles were about — and nor did
various business colleagues to whom he
had showed them. If these experienced
lecturers in finance couldnot decipher his
writings, for whom were they intended?
Zicklin’s answer was that the research was
for the community of scholars who write
for one another but not for their students
and certainly not for business executives
who are interested in practical ideas that
might actually work.
8.8 million are above the age of 50 and
2.2 million are over 60. HELB can take
comfort from the fact that in the US,
people in their 50s or 60s still owe money
on their student loans. As for how much
students need to borrow, former Ohio
University economics professor Richard
Vedder says that those attending four-year
public universities now pay more than in
previous years by double the inflation rate
over the same period.
Zicklin states that this situation cannot
continue. Resources from government
funding in the US, individuals, foundation
grants and well-to-do parents are not as
available as in the recent past. He claims
that sooner rather than later there will be
an inflection point and colleges will be left
with too much overhead, too few students
and large budget deficits. The top 50 or so
schools may be temporarily exempt from
the pain, but even they will suffer when
the squeeze intensifies. He points out
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